


we whispered names to the things in the dark

by neofightMe



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alcohol, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/F, Fridge Horror, Gen, I'm not gonna tag Tavros because he shows up for like one scene, Pact but written like Buffy, Quite a bit of that stuff, Supernatural and paranormal themes, dead aradia but not in the normal way, death spirit that is almost definitely evil, evil giant spider with control issues, exorcists with chainsaws, extreme bullshit, lots of mythology bullshit, sort of urban fantasy, spiritstuck AU, terezi's awesome dragon dad, vriskas canonical mother issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-22
Updated: 2018-06-01
Packaged: 2019-04-06 16:58:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 30,987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14061363
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neofightMe/pseuds/neofightMe
Summary: A 21st birthday bash goes horribly, terribly wrong, embroiling everyone in a battle with an ancient horror of the night. Terezi can't figure out when, or how- was it when Tavros wandered off? When that random stranger came by to drop a red hot prophecy on everyone?And is it all because of that unusual spirit, the one that trails her like a shadow and the one that she just can't leave to die?This was supposed to be a fun night out with friends, damn it.





	1. 8itch

**Author's Note:**

> I made a [playlist](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-Qkx9TAM10&index=1&list=PLgjNJKPMWZeAq1aZ8JNM-Wa-w8rZak6ab&t=0s) for this.
> 
> Feel free to hit me up on [lalondeislandicedtea.tumblr.com](https://lalondeislandicedtea.tumblr.com/)

**> Enter nightclub**

The club is, as the kids say, lit tonight.

You’re nearly at the front of the line, bouncing on your toes to the ill beats that thump out from beyond the open doors. Tavros is in front of you practically quivering in… You’re not even sure what. Breathless anticipation? Stark terror?

Aradia stands next to him, calming him down with light-hearted jibes and reassurances that “it’ll be fun, Tavros! You can stand to leave home every now and again- it’ll be _fine_ , mark my words.”

You decide to contribute. “It’s your birthday, Peter Pan. Your _twenty-first_ . You’re an _adult_. Or at the very least, a kidult.”

Tavros stares at his feet. “It, um. Yeah. It is. I am. Well, I want to, um, contest that kidult part, that, um… ”

He glances at your face, and looks down again quickly. “Uh, anyway, thanks for inviting me out tonight.”  

“Of course! Such a significant milestone _must_ be acknowledged. With overpriced booze and peer pressure to do stupid things, of course. All American custom, you know.”

Beside you is Sollux. Sollux, despite being the only underage member of your motley crew, is utterly disinterested in everything. He is tapping out something on his phone.

You peek at the screen. Grey text.

“We went to all the trouble dragging you out of the house, Solluxander Captor,” you say, clapping him on the back hard enough to momentarily straighten his spine. “And here you are, about to enter this _fine_ establishment, and you’re just arguing with Karkat. Again.”

“That’s because he’s wrong about everything,” he answers, not looking up.

“You could take a vacation. I’m _sure_ he has legions of other people to argue with.”

He looks up and gives you a completely flat stare.

“Terezi,” he says. “You know _perfectly_ well that they’d be even more wrong than him. Objectively. Metaphorically. And every other -ly you can imagine.”

“Imaginatively,” you supply.

“ _Exactly_ . I couldn’t even understand how the _fuck_ can people be that spectacularly wrong about very basic facts of the world- that’s the perfect explanation. They’re fucking dreaming.”

Despite being two months younger than the birthday boy there, he manages to fit in this crowd- what with the dark circles, stubble, and general indifference. You’re actually a little concerned that the bouncers will ask nervous, baby-faced Tavros if his parents know he’s out that late.

Of course, that’s mostly because Tavros is actually nervous about not getting in. Sollux’s secret is not giving a shit. If his fake ID doesn’t hold up he’d just head home for a game or three of Warframe or whatever.

The only reason he’s here, in fact, is for Aradia. Her age doesn’t matter. When she glances back at you there is a strangeness to her. Her hair and clothes don’t move quite right, not in the still air, and her face has sharpened- more prominent cheekbones, some very faint crow’s feet. A glance would place her around the late twenties or early thirties.

She doesn’t even get carded, just waved in. Tavros gets carded, of course. As do you. It’s the curse of the Asian baby-face.

You’re a little insulted that Sollux gets a pass, if you’re completely honest. You suppose that having almost one entire foot of height on you has that effect.

“That was, good, that they didn’t stop any of us,” Birthday Boy says. “Not that I was expecting, that, uh, that we wouldn’t? But, uh…”

“I’ll buy you a drink,” you tell him. He opens his mouth to protest, and then thinks better of it.

You get a mojito for him, and shots for everyone else. You shout over the music for everyone to find a table.

Let it be known that when it comes to partying, Terezi Pyrope is simply the best there is.

As the three of you put down your empty shots, Aradia frowns.

“I don’t feel anything. Darn.”

Darn. You’d all hoped that she could get something out of hard spirits, but apparently not.

“It’s not what it’s cracked up to be, anyway,” Sollux says, shrugging. “I’m gonna go get a beer. What do you guys want?”

You consider. “Singapore Sling if they have ‘em. A Cosmo otherwise.”

“Just water, I guess.” Aradia stares at the bar, expression unreadable. “I suppose it doesn’t really matter.”

The three of you stare down Tavros, who stirs his drink self-consciously. “What? I’m, uh. I’m good.”

“Three cowboys for Tav,” you decide. Sollux nods approval, while Tavros sputters.

“You’re, honestly, too generous, and I think that’s really not necessary, and-”

“Major milestone, Peter Pan. We’re here to make irresponsible decisions.”

He shifts a little. “But, you’re not drinking three shots and a, uh, another drink.”

He _is_ going a little red.

“We’re going to be more sober so you’re free to make irresponsible decisions,” you tell him cheerfully. “Think of us as chaperones. Fun chaperones!”

“You’re talking me into, uh, imbibing more than I would, so I’m not, really sure if chaperone is, uh, really what you’re, going for there.”

“Like I said. Fun chaperones.”

Aradia nods seriously. “And after you have your shots you’re going to dance.”

Tavros glances worriedly at the dance floor, at the heaving crush of bodies. “Dance?”

“Yes. Dance. And I,” she points at herself, still deathly serious, “will be taking you there.”

“I, um.”

Aradia stares him down until the inevitable ‘I can’t dance’ finally bubbles away.

Sollux announces his return by placing a tray down unceremoniously. You reach for your red drink with glee, and then set out the shots for Tavros, who is staring at them like a death row prisoner stares down the barrel of a gun.

“How do I, um. Have these?”

“Have you finished your drink?” Sollux inquires, popping the top off his beer. Tavros shakes his head slowly, mumbling about taking it slow or some such.

“Finish it.”

He sips it carefully under everyone’s careful scrutiny.

“Done? Great. Now you pick that up.” Sollux points to the first cowboy in the row.

Tavros picks it up, still eyeing it distrustfully.

“Now tip it back,” Sollux mimes it, “and swallow quickly.”

“Um.”

The three of you look at him, expectant.

“It’ll be alright,” Aradia reassures him. “It’s not even straight liquor, so it won’t taste _too_ disgusting.”

“That, uh, makes it sound very appealing.”

“Don’t think too much,” you advise. “Just do it. This is another important milestone, you see.”

“I mean, if you say so.” Tavros sniffs the shot, and then downs it. You see the moment the taste hits, the struggle to hold it in his mouth, and then, eventually, the swallowing.

“How was it?” Aradia asks, as the birthday boy regains his composure. He is beet red.

“Ugh,” he replies. That appears to be the extent of his faculties at the moment.

You pretend to think. “If you don’t want to do the other two, you can just go and dance with Aradia now.”

He stares at the dancefloor. The DJ is playing some kind of electronica with a heavy bass, probably by some European band with a witty name. Most people are doing some kind of rhythmic gyration.

Then he wordlessly takes the next two shots.

You make sure to cheer him on. Having imbibed this amount, it seems to perk him up a lot. He even leans over the table for a high five with you.

When Aradia stands up, he follows.

Sollux is snickering. He has his phone out, and he is taking pictures.

“That was sneaky as hell, TZ. More alcohol, or dance now? And he decides rightly that he can’t take the dancing sober.”

“I hope he has fun,” you say, mildly. “The inability to say no is really going to do him in one of these days.”

“Well, yeah. But that’s something he’ll learn. So what’s up with you these days, anyway? Heard that you’re skipping town soon.”

You sip at your drink, contemplative. “Yeah. I need to head to the coast to be inducted as a cleric.”

You’re not sure how to feel about that. You’re finding that you’re not as excited as you should be to go there, but you’re not exactly devastated about leaving, either.

You’re just sort of beset by the feeling that there _should_ be something. Like there’s a purpose you should be chasing after. You almost feel adrift, walking a path that just seems like the best option right now.

Heavy stuff, for what is supposed to be a fun night out with friends.

Sollux seems to get it. He nods, and asks about other stuff. Family. Mutual friends. Bitching about the assholes in your life.  

Then you drop another heavy question.

“How are you holding on, Sollux?”

The _about_ hangs silent.

He laces his fingers together and stares into space. “That’s a bit hard to answer,” he replies.

“Are there any side effects?” Being a supplicant, or just someone who spends a lot of time with spirits, often comes with those.

He meets your eyes, and very deliberately says, “no.”

He’s lying. Must be tipsier than he looks if he thinks he can get shit past you. After that one beer, he’d had a few more, and so had you, but you’d slowed it down over the last half hour or so, so you’re pretty lucid.

Being a good friend, you’re not going to pry. And anyway, someone seems to have appeared at your table.

She has short blonde hair cut into a fashionable bob, and the poise of a viper waiting to strike. You can’t tell what colour her eyes are under the shitty club lighting.

“May I help you?” you ask politely. In your experience, many things are achievable by asking politely, and then kicking ass until your politeness is heeded.

To that, she asks, “Could I have a few moments of your time?”

“Whatever you’re selling, I’m not interested,” Sollux replies.

She smiles slightly. Wryly. “I’m not selling anything. Just thought you’d like a little heads up, that’s all.”

Your hand brushes the jade pendant at your collar, the one carved in the shape of a dragon. Her aura briefly flares into view. You squint.

The mysterious girl appears to be a cleric. A cleric with prophecy.

“We’d better listen,” you tell Sollux.

The girl smiles. “I’m Rose. There’s an unusual number of spirits in this club tonight.”

Sollux bristles, and then forces himself to relax. “Yeah? What about them?”

“Aside from the traces that hang around you two, and your friend there-”

Aradia bursts from the throng. She frowns at Rose’s presence, and looks to you in askance.

“She… I think we should listen.”

“She seems to know a lot,” Sollux warns.

Rose smiles. “That’s my job. As I was saying, however, there is another strong spiritual presence in this establishment tonight.”

Aradia frowns, and then shakes her head, remembering. “Wait, no, I came here to ask if you’ve seen Tavros. He went off to the bathroom but he’s been awhile.”

“He’s in danger,” Rose says. “He will not stay in danger, but you should hurry, all the same. The other being is presently exiting this venue.”

She points over the heads of the crowd at the emergency exit barely visible from where you are.

“Hurry.”

She turns her attention to you and frowns. Sollux and Aradia are up, hands linked, moving towards the exit but she seems to want you to stay for a moment.

“Good luck, dragon girl,” she whispers to you as you stand. She presses something into your hands and as you make your way to the exit, you identify it as a bottle of water.

**> Terezi: Rescue friend**

The back of the club is filthy, littered with cigarette butts and empty bottles. Music pounds from behind the brick, but it’s muffled from the outside and the effect is somewhat like being transported to a different realm.

The three of you get there just in time to see Tavros lolling back on top of a dumpster, in the grasp of a young woman. She has long black hair streaming around the spiderwebs tattooed across her shoulder blades, and she is holding his chin in one hand and saying something.

Gripping your pendant, you see the glamour unpeel. She’s entirely grey and she’s got vibrant orange-yellow horns. She is staring right at you.

“Oh,” she says, with disgust. “He’s got _friends_.”

You don’t see what her inclination is, one way or another. The spiritual traces around her are strongly reminiscent of spiders, but she isn’t personally a spider? Weird.

She releases Tavros and springs at you. Aradia steps forward to intercept and the spirit freezes in place, ringed by several spinning red discs. The outpouring of energy is immediate- a burst of red centred on Aradia.

The spider-demon girl doesn’t seem to have her own aura, but she’s _clearly_ made of ether and not material flesh. She’s-

Not a spirit, you realise. A cambion. A lesser lackey to a spirit, essentially, but still plenty dangerous.

Aradia’s eyes glow a deep red. Her hair and clothes rise slightly, like a windstorm centred on her.

“I can’t hold her for long,” she says, “and I might have to let her out. The Shepherd.”

You wince. That’s not something you’d wanted or anticipated tonight.

You untwist the lid on the bottle Rose gave you and douse the cambion liberally. You don’t have your ceremonial knife; this was supposed to be a _fun night out_ , for fuck’s sake.

In lieu of the knife, you clutch your dragon pendant and call your patron as loudly as you can.

 _Sorry_ , you think, as the water wicks off the cambion’s still form, forming a bank of weak fog. The red discs are spinning more slowly, now, and you can’t imagine that means anything other than you’re running out of time.

You’re aware that Sollux has dragged Tavros off the lid of the dumpster, and that means when Aradia’s stasis effect ends, you have to-

 _Now_. - push her to the end of the alley, where she can’t get at you.

She adapts fast, and you’re a little sluggish from the drinking. She skirts around the edge of the fog and you can’t move it fast enough. One clawed hand pins you to the wall with surprising force, and you choke up, struggling to breathe.

“That’s all you’ve got?” she asks, sneering. A pair of canines protrude past her lip. You imagine that they are very sharp.

You grope around the wall for something you’re _certain_ you saw coming out of the exit.

The spigot on the wall. You twist it and the water spews everywhere. The cambion shrieks, and you take the opportunity to gasp in a grateful breath.

Then you coat yourself with mist. Draconic features take shape; she swats at the half-formed jaws and tails, releasing you in the process.

You shove her, the mist giving you extra force, and scramble back.

Aradia is no longer there. In her place stands an eerily tall figure of bone and decaying flesh, wreathed in the crimson energy of the time domain. Its hair is matted, reaching down to the bottom of its ribcage. Instead of a face, it has the skull of a ram.

One of its hands raises, and aims. The cambion stumbles back as a disc begins furiously spinning clockwise. The patch of ground around her begins crumbling, and dust is thrown up in a cloud.

When the dust clears, there is only the grey-skinned being with horns- she’d dropped the glamour. Her eyes are a baleful yellow as she glares up at the time spirit.

The Shepherd of Darwin Valley looks down impassively. It has no real eyes, not inside the ram’s skull.

Ethereal creatures start manifesting. The cambion flinches as they circle around her, pressing bloodied hands to her skin.

You gather up the water and fog and create a dragon in the likeness of your patron to loom over her head.

“You’re outnumbered,” you tell her. “Surrender, and let us-”

“No,” the cambion snarls. She’s _quick_. She gets on top of the dumpster in one jump, and then scales the walls of the alley in another burst of motion.

Gone in the blink of an eye.

This leaves the lot of you staring at the dead end dumbly. When you ascertain that she is not coming back, you let the mist drop back into regular water, and go and turn off the tap.

The Shepherd of Darwin Valley turns to survey the three of you.

Her voice ripples over you. It’s reminiscent of the whimper of a man’s dying breath, the last sputter of flame from the supernova of a faraway star. Death and inevitability.

_“She dropped the glamour voluntarily. I am keeping to my end of the bargain.”_

Sollux sighs. “What’s the toll, tonight?”

The ram’s skull sways as she considers. Her flesh forms and decays, creating a creepy ever-shifting effect.

_“I’ll take three months.”_

You have to step forward. “Sixty days. And not a day more.”

Her spine creaks slightly as she turns her entire head to face her eye sockets towards you.

_“Supplicant of the lake dragon. How… interesting.”_

A confluence of temporal energy reduces her leg bones into dust, bringing her skull right to your nose. You smell decay. You smell the dust after the products of decay have been worn away by time, the microorganisms that rot corpses having died for the want of food. You smell fungus and wildflowers growing over an unmarked grave.

You keep your back straight, and your eyes on her face. Skull. Whatever.

_“I’ll name my price, dragon’s girl. A year of vision. How is that?”_

You close your eyes, imagining blindness. Weighing a year of darkness against death.

“Deal,” you say.

She doesn’t move outwardly, but tendrils of red light stream around you. They weave over your eyes, and you’re left blinking bright spots out of your vision.

_“Very well.”_

Sollux is hissing curses behind you.

“I think,” he says, flatly, “that she’d like to return, now.”

The ram’s skull nods once. The ghostly apparitions vanish, and its flesh and bones starts dissolving and crumbling away in a haze of temporal energy. When its entire body is gone, Aradia abruptly appears in its place.

She glances at Sollux, regret writ plain on her face.

“Sorry. The situation was becoming unmanageable.”

Sollux jams his hands into his pockets and snorts. “Don’t look at me. The genius over there decided to try to barter.”

Aradia looks at you for a while. She settles for just a sigh. “How’s Tavros?”

He’s leaning against the wall, pupils blown wide. She frowns.

“Are you okay?”

No reply. Sollux checks for a pulse.

“He _seems_ fine, physically.” he says.

You get a cupped handful of water and splash his face. He gasps, and blinks furiously.

“ _Fuck_ ,” he says. He’s heaving, gasping for air like he’s been underwater. “What was that?”

“A lesser… spirit thing,” you tell him. He’s not well-versed in this field, and you’d like to keep it that way. Spirits and other nasties would probably eat him alive if he tried to get involved.

He looks around, still somewhat stunned. “Where is she?”

You shrug. “Ran off. We scared her off.”

“Fuck,” he says again. “That was… Wow.”

“What happened?” Aradia asks.

“I was on a cliff and she was coming towards me, blocking off, my way out,” he says. “There were a lot of spiders, as well? And she was laughing a lot. Pointing a lance at me.”

His eyes flick over the rooftops, as though expecting her to appear. “She told me to fly,” he says. “But, uh, like, mockingly.”

“Did you step off the cliff?” Aradia asks, urgent. Tavros wordlessly shakes his head.

“Good.” She chews at her lip, and doesn’t elaborate.

“I think we can stand to go home, now,” Sollux says. He’s tense as a tightrope, uncharacteristically anxious.

You agree. You head to Tavros’ dorm, and you set up some protections.

A tub of water that you can infuse with your patron’s power at a moment’s notice.

Aradia puts down a collection of rat’s skulls she had in her bag.

It is still Tavros’ birthday, so you light some candles, and mix some Negronis for everyone. You take turns telling dumb stories about people you know, see tired faces smiling, lit by flickering candlelight.

You try not to think about not seeing this ever again.  

The cambion doesn’t appear again. The night passes uneventfully.

You wonder what her deal is.

**> Terezi: Wake up**

Your phone buzzes like an angry hornet and you half-rise, half-tumble from the couch.

Waking up is agony. Your spine protests the weird posture you enter by sleeping on a damn couch, and your eyes burn as you stare into the phone’s glare to switch off your six am alarm before you wake everyone else up.

Tavros is presumably in his bedroom. You find Sollux sprawled out and snoring on a quilt in the hallway. Aradia occupies the armchair, reading.

“Would you like some coffee?” she asks in a whisper. “It should be ready about now.”

You inhale deeply. The aroma is making itself known, wafting from the kitchenette.

“You’re a goddamn saint, Ray,” you mouth back to her.

Coffee consumed, you’re feeling a bit more human than the amount of sleep you got would suggest. Before you leave, you remember reach up to your throat, checking that you have your jade pendant on you.

Your mother and aunt will _murder_ you if you ever lost that.

It’s time to get home.

**> Gather supplies**

A banana, a granola bar and a tub of strawberry yoghurt. Breakfast of champions.

Ceremonial knife. You give the blade a quick polish. Your reflection shows a short, Chinese-looking girl with crater-sized dark circles under her eyes. Into the sheath it goes.

It never hurts to give it a moment of appreciation. The handle is made of cast iron, formed in the shape of a snarling dragon’s head. Like the dragons that decorated imperial palaces. The emperor’s dragons. The sheath is inlaid with mother-of-pearl, featuring a motif of the same wingless dragon swimming through clouds.

It’s awesome. You are even deader than dead if you ever lose this; your entire family is going to kill you twice. Each. Unlike the jade dragon pendants that go to everyone in your family as you come of age, there’s only one of this dagger.

You’re proud that you’ve been entrusted with its care.

However, with this dagger comes grave responsibilities, one of which is getting up at the ass-crack of dawn each day to go up to the lake.

Oil and incense. You unlock the drawers, and consider.

You did call for a favour last night. So you grab the good stuff. The large incense that burns for the whole day, and you count out four more little thin sticks.

Dustpan to clean up the shrine. Matches in case the fire’s gone out. A small bag of rice.

You’re probably forgetting something, but the sun will rise soon and it’s imperative that you get your ass up the mountain before the morning fog clears. So you get moving.

Driving up the mountain is always soothing. You wind down the windows, letting the morning breeze in to screw up your bedhead. At this hour on a Saturday, almost everyone’s still in bed. You pass two joggers midway up the hill, and then you’re completely alone.

It’s nice. Hartewell isn’t a big city, but it is still a city. Travelling up mountain roads, you can almost pretend that it’s just you, alone in the whole wide world.

No traffic. No city. Nothing but you, the mountain, and the giant redwoods.

You park in your usual spot, at a picnic ground next to the wilderness trail. The last bit you’d have to travel on foot. Not because there isn’t a road there, but because it’s tradition. And with dragons, traditions bear weight.

Your patron is a young dragon, young being relative. He needs all the tradition he can get. Five generations is almost paltry, compared to the dragons ruling the lakes in China, but this is America.

Five generations of supplicants isn’t terrible for an American spirit, especially for a non-Native spirit.  

You make the hike, and you try to think about tradition. Your mother making this hike, hearing the same birdsong, the same crunch of twigs and gravel under her shoes. Your aunt taking her offerings.

Your grandfather. His father before him, and his father’s father.

The miners that came to this place when it was a collection of mining camps, making the hike to pray to their newfound dragon, far from home.

As you climb higher, the morning fog thickens. It almost feels like a welcome into your patron’s domain.

A speck of red and gold stands out in the fog. It is a short, blocky structure coming up to your waist; the miniature roof features a pair of dark blue, almost-black dragons, meeting in the middle.

Inside is the tablet bearing the name of your patron in flowing Chinese calligraphy. It is framed by a pair of red candlesticks, which have gone out. The urn sits in the centre, in front of the tablet, stubs of old incense standing in pale grey ashes. To the right is a wick in a bowl of oil, flickering slightly. To the left is a half-full bowl of uncooked rice, and an empty cup for-

Oh, damn it. You knew you forgot something. The rice wine.

You stop in front the shrine and put down your bag.

There is a loud crack of a twig snapping, and silence. You freeze.

You’ve been followed.

Alright. Keep calm. You kneel in front of the shrine like there’s nothing wrong, and you reach into you backpack nonchalantly. Start withdrawing you items. Rice. Incense. Oil.

Dagger.

Someone, or something, moves behind you. You ignore it.

You think you have a _reasonably_ good idea of who it is.

Dagger in hand, you perform your usual shrine duties. Top up the oil in the bowl, so that the flame will keep burning. Re-light the candles. Clean out the urn, brush the ashes off the base of the shrine. Light your incense- big incense in the middle, little ones surrounding it. Top up the rice.

You can’t really do anything about not having your patron’s beverage of choice, so you mutter some quick apologies.

The lack of sleep is really making itself known. You yawn, despite your coffee. Your eyelids droop.

 _Stay awake, child. That’s how she gets you_.

You startle awake to the voice of your patron, and hear a muffled curse.

The cambion. Right. Nightmare domain.

She’s in human form, perched on the roof of the shrine, running a blue-painted fingernail along one of the dragons. Her face is scrunched into a frown, which becomes a sneer as you look up at her.

“I don’t need to be in your head to get rid of you,” she says, decisive. Her form shimmers and the glamour drops.

You have the good sense to duck and unsheath your knife as she lunges. You take the moment she needs to recover and reorient and sprint up the stone steps into the fog.

Visibility drops as you approach the lake. You can hear your patron in the whistle of wind past your ears, in the faint splash of the lake’s waves.

This is your home ground, if you can only get to the damn lake. You make it to the end of the stone steps and onto the sandy ground of the lake’s shore before the cambion catches up.

You hear a satisfied growl and then you are shoved, tackled to the ground. The cambion smirks as you roll over. She shifts, and you’re struggling to breathe, her deadweight on your ribs pinning you down.

One clawed foot finds your hand and grinds down until you’re forced to let go of your weapon.

“You’re fast, but I’m faster,” she says. She should be panting with exertion, but then, she’s more spirit than flesh. You’re not even sure if she needs to breathe.

“I’m just fast enough,” you retort. Your free hand scoops up a handful of lakeside sand and flings it up.

Your aim doesn’t matter. You’re at your patron’s lake and he is the god of this place. The sand is swept up into a wave of stinging wind, blown into her alien yellow eyes, scraping against her grey skin. You take advantage of her distraction to throw her off and run into the lake.

When you get yourself into knee-high water, you know you’ve won. A great grey shape looms high above you, blotting out the sky.

_Child. What have you brought into my domain?_

“Sorry, Hui Wu,” you say, panting. “I was followed.”

_Mighty stupid of this creature, to follow one of mine into my demesne._

Grey fog begins coming off the water, and climbing over your shoulders. You reach out and let the little grey dragon perch on your arm.

“Thanks for the assist last night,” you say.

The great grey shape above you descends slightly, and seems to consider it.

_I protect my own. This is the creature you required protection from?_

“Yes. The one and the same.”

A second grey dragon of mist and fog climbs up your back and onto your shoulders. This one perches on your head, and coils its tail around your neck.

The cambion stalks back and forth on the shore of the lake, glaring daggers at you.

“Come get me,” you call to her, grinning. She hisses in response.

“Do I look stupid or something? Fuck you!”

“Then leave. Don’t bother any of us again.”

The cambion begins to react to that, and then looks thoughtful.

“There’s a reason why you’re up here so early.” She smirks.

“Your patron is made of fog. Morning fog. All I have to do now is to wait until it’s afternoon and you won’t be able to do _shit_ to stop me.”

“Oh no, my secret weakness,” you deadpan. As though you haven’t heard that one before.

You make your way towards her, wading through the lakewater slowly, but steadily. The great grey dragon descends and you watch as her face twists from triumph to uncertainty to stark terror.

As big as Hui Wu looks when he’s circling high above the lake, he looks even bigger up close. He lands gracefully, great serpentine body coiling around the two of you, blocking off the cambion’s escape.

A single huge, imposing claw closes around her torso. His head looms large over the two of you. Each of the teeth in his mouth is bigger than your entire head.

Your patron’s tail shifts through the sand, and twitches. You reach up and snatch your dagger out of the air.

“Alright, you fucking win,” she spits. “Bind me. Kill me. Just know that-”

You blink, mystified. “Who said anything about killing?”

She stares at you like you’re an idiot. “That’s what you do with something like me. How do you get to be a cleric without knowing this shit, anyway?”

 _Supplicant. She is but a humble supplicant of mine_ , the dragon rumbles. You try to ignore the slightest edge of disapproval to his words.

“Go on, then,” she says, yellow eyes locked hard onto yours.

 _I'd crush her in my hand_ , your patron says. _But I believe that the choice should lie with you_.

You sigh, and pinch the bridge of your nose.

She’s right, though. The sensible thing is to be rid of her.

But something about killing her just because of what she is doesn’t strike you as right. It is simple unjust.

So.

“I’ll let you go.”

She squawks in surprise, but you bring the knife up to her face and she stills. “Under one condition. You leave me and my friends alone. You do not attempt to harm us. You do not attempt to enter our minds and our dreams. You _leave us alone_.”

“Deal,” she replies, sulky. “I swear on the spirit Arachnea Tyraneus that I will not attempt to harm you and your three associates from the other day-”

She scowls. “Not that the fucking _Demoness_ needs protection from me, that’s fucking absurd-”

“Swear,” you urge her. She was right about your patron diminishing as noon approaches. Time is of the essence.

“And I swear that I will not try to infringe on your minds with the intent to harm you.”

You do not move your knife. She scowls.

“Finalise it,” you tell her. You deal with dragons. Slippery wordings are not new to you.

The cambion heaves a long suffering sigh, and says, “And should I break my word, I will give up my life and power. This I swear, under the power of the Arachnea.”

You frown. “I don’t like that you invoked this… other spirit. Are you trying to call it?”

She eyes you disdainfully. “You really don’t have any idea how cambions work, do you?”

You have to admit that you’re less than certain about that field.

She sighs. “That’s the spirit I was born of. That’s who I serve. I don’t have a name of my own, and I don’t have power of my own. So I have to swear on her.”

You look to your patron, who stares down at you, impassive. _You made your choice._

“So the spider-demon knows about this, now?” You’re not very familiar with this particular spirit but you can harbour a guess.

The cambion looks put out. “Yes. She does.”

Your patron looks to you, expectant. But you gave your word.

“Let her go.” You can’t help but to feel like you’re making a horrible mistake.

He lets her go and uncoils his great bulk, giving her an exit. She stretches out her limbs, eyes you suspiciously, and then makes a break for it.

You pick your way to the shore, and sit. Sheath your knife.

Look over the water.

“Did I make a mistake, Hui Wu?”

 _Mistakes are subjective. In time, you will decide_.

You don’t really expect anything else from your dragon.

“I’m sorry I forgot your wine.”

He harrumphs.

“I have gin.”

 _I suppose that’s better than nothing. Don’t forget tomorrow morning, child_.

With that, the sun breaks through the thinning fog, and he is gone.

You pour the last of your gin into his cup, and think about how you’re going to handle the cambion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi guys! It's me, back at it again with the weirdly specific AUs. 
> 
> This work is loosely inspired by Pact, by Wildbow- so go check that out if you liked what you see because he does it better. Prior knowledge is not required at all, and won't help in any case- my rules are different and are much looser. 
> 
> Vrisrezi this time, hopefully tighter and shorter. There will be more viewpoints coming up- I'm trying to branch out somewhat.


	2. crystal mannequins

**> Be the cambion**

You don’t have a name. The closest you have to a name, you suppose, is a title floating around cheesy horror-spirit blogs: the Spider’s Right Hand. 

You also roll with Arachnid’s Grip. But you don’t have a name. 

You’re a sliver of an old spirit, comparatively powerless. You have one task and one duty- to feed your mom. 

Speaking of which. 

You need to move your mom. You try to communicate that to her, but she simply clicks her mandibles, agitated. 

_ Click clack click click click _ . 

The Arachnea doesn’t speak. It works better, in the nightmare domain, to be something that can’t be spoken to or reasoned with. Part of the psychic sustenance she takes is the pleas of her victims, their dawning realisations that their dying screams will not be heeded and never be heard. 

But you can understand her. And she’s saying that she’s  _ hungry _ . 

She is amazing to behold- a spider from the worst nightmares of the arachnophobic. In this abandoned warehouse, she lies across two twenty-foot shipping containers and dwarfs them together. Her carapace has the lustre of a black pearl, and the toughness of steel- you’ve seen her take bullets and not even slow down. On her belly is a blood red stain that appears, at first, to be the hourglass shape on all black widows, but shifts into other, indescribable shapes before the eyes of the unsuspecting, creating ominous Rorschach inkblots that linger in their vision long after they close their eyes. 

Her head takes the shape of a funnel web’s- eight inky black eyes set over a pair of wickedly sharp fangs protruding over a her mandibles. And you know that feeding into those fangs is a sac of hallucinogen- something that makes it  _ exceedingly _ easy for you or her to slip into someone’s nightmares and destroy them utterly. 

These days, you don’t even need the venom. Except, apparently, when you run into  _ trouble _ . 

You scowl. As much as you dislike doing this, you’re going to have to extract some venom. 

Flicking a switchblade open, you lunge towards your mom’s fangs. She rears back, hissing. 

Coaxing her to raise her fangs, you collect the venom into a small glass tube. Some of it splatters against your arm, and you feel it going numb. 

You pocket the glass tube, and check your affected arm. You didn’t get that much on you, so it’s not  _ entirely _ see-through- but there’s a trace of translucency there.

Your mother takes on traits sourced from the fear of her food. Every time you deal with this venom you’re faced with the thought that perhaps she’s taking on traits from  _ your _ fear. 

Unfortunately, the more you think about it, the less you can shake your suspicions. You’re pretty sure that you’re only the latest in a long line of spider cambions, and you’re pretty sure you know where they’ve all gone. 

Your mom clicks her mandibles again.  _ Hungry _ . 

“I know, I know! God, I’m  _ going _ .” 

You get going. 

Things have been rough lately- you’re being chased by an exorcist, for one, so there’s that pain in the ass. But you know that the two of you will get out of this. You’ve been through worse. When you were born, your mom was a quarter of her current size- just another man-sized abomination skulking through the night. You brought her victims, food, and she grew- large. Stronger. More durable. More dangerous. 

You just need to get out of here. And when you get to somewhere else, and hopefully shake that meddling exorcist off your tail, you can- she can feed. 

How much, though? 

What used to be a month’s worth of victims barely sustains her for a week, now; you’re afraid that soon, it’ll be for mere days. And after that? Hours.  

But you can keep up with this. You have to. 

You can’t afford to get sloppy tonight, not after all your recent fuck-ups. Today you need to focus. You need to find a weak target, a target that can’t fight back. You  _ thought _ you had your target last night, but he’d turned out to have friends- friends with spiritual backup. 

God, why were you dumb enough to think that you could fight one of them?

Were you  _ actually _ dumb enough to think that you could come out unscathed?

You know better than to dwell on it. That’s what losers do- they dwell and dwell and dwell, spinning themselves round in circles. You don’t do that. You’re too busy for it, juggling all your various irons in the fire. 

Hunting for spider food is the first. You track down this guy- frumpy looking office worker. His boss yelled at him in front of the entire office and he just stared down at his shoes sadly. 

And tellingly, no one looks up. They exchange glances, and try to look very busy, and no one speaks up for him. 

You want strangers to speculate after he disappears, to strike the fear of your mom into the heart of the community, but you don’t want to take anyone too beloved. Loved ones are a real  _ bitch _ to deal with. Better to just pick off the lonely weirdos that won’t be missed; people will still get worried, but you won’t have all the  _ mess _ on your hands.

So he’s perfect spider food. 

He stops by at this convenience store after work. Buys a frozen meal- not real groceries. Probably can’t be bothered making it from scratch if he’s only cooking for one- so probably lives on his own. You could have guessed- everything about this guy screams  _ loser _ . 

It’s so thoughtlessly easy to go after the losers in this world. No one will miss ‘em. 

Earlier at the office, you’d caught his name. Did some Googling and shit with the company and everything, dug around and got an address. You head straight there while he’s still standing in the street, looking at the sky. Probably wondering whether he should hit up the liquor store. 

Like you said. Loser. 

He beats you back to his apartment because he’s in a car and you’re limited to running through the shadows, but you’re pretty close. As you slink into the basement parking, he’s still sitting in the car, phone in hand. 

Playing a game, looks like. 

God, what a bore. You focus on him, and you can kind of see the game on his screen bloom into your awareness, cheerful animations all soft and fuzzy. 

He finds it tedious, but it’s just another way to kill time. There’s a undercurrent of dread that he’s trying not to think about.

He  _ really _ doesn’t want to go upstairs. 

You feel his tedium, roll your eyes, and crank it up, subtly, by degrees. The game starts getting fuzzier. 

Through your own eyes, you see the loser’s head start to drop. From his eyes you perceive the game taking on the almost-permeable quality of an afterimage. 

His eyes are closed. 

You go in for the kill. 

In his mind, he’s still playing the game- but he’s kind of in the game. He beats another level, and he starts walking down the bright pink road that unfurls beneath his feet. 

You place yourself behind him on the road, making sure to stay two steps away at all times. 

He feels your presence behind you, and walks faster. It affects the dreamscape; the cheerful bright animations start falling to pieces, parts of the character’s faces peeling like so much old wallpaper. The road starts crumbling- a stray brick here, a jagged hole there. 

You stay two steps behind him all this time, even though you don’t move any faster. This is all his doing and he doesn’t even know it. 

As he runs in the dream, his physical body starts the motions to get out of the car, desperately unlatching seat belts, unlocking the doors, scrambling out. Panicking along with his dream self. 

The brightly coloured cartoon land has long fallen away into some kind of urban landscape in disrepair. 

There’s a building, you note, that looks an awful lot like his office building. His boss stares at him from inside, face set and blank, and he doesn’t try to enter. 

“What do you want from me?” he screams, in the dream. 

You are about to answer, but a gunshot in the real world brings you back. You abandon the dream and the man slumps to the ground, still stuck in the dream. 

You curse, and clutch at your gut. The pain is sharp and horrible until you dismiss your human glamour. 

The real you, the one made from ether, is fine. But the gunshot is a bad sign. 

It means that the exorcist is here. 

You get a move on. Throw yourself  _ up _ , scaling the wall and climbing up the exposed pipes and supports on the ceiling. The exorcist-  _ damn her- _ doesn’t shoot. Probably doesn’t want to rupture those pipes. 

“You can’t hide up there forever,” the exorcist says, mildly. She over-enunciates every word she says, like Siri reading out dictionary definitions and it annoys the shit out of you. “I should hope not. I have a timeline I’d like to keep to.”

She’s wearing a black trench coat over a red midi-skirt. You know, from experience, that under that skirt is a fucking chainsaw because some exorcists are fucking lunatics. This one, to be more specific. 

You didn’t expect her to be here so  _ early _ , though. She must have gotten a tip off somewhere. 

You need a way out of here. 

Her back is to the exit of the garage, so what you could do is just climb through the ceiling. The problem is that one of the steel beams crisscrossing the ceiling will block you  _ right _ in front of the exorcist. 

Which means you need to make the last fifteen feet or so on the ground and be lucky enough not to get shot. You’re not that durable- two shots, maybe three at most, and you’d shatter.  

Luckily for you, luck has  _ kind of  _ became your thing. One of the irons you keep in the fire, just in case. 

Coiled behind a pipe on the ceiling, you slide your mind into that loser’s dream again. He’s looking around frantically, waiting for you to pounce at him out of the shadows. He’s cornered himself into some sort of dark alley while you were off being shot at. Wolves run through the street, howling. 

You shift into your human appearance and will a rifle into existence. Then you shoot three wolves through the head right in front of him. 

You hold out a hand. “Come with me!” 

He’s a scared loser, and you’re pretty and awesome, so he follows. In the waking world, you pilot his body towards the exorcist. While she’s holding back and not hitting him, you slip down a support column and make a break for it. 

You don’t make it. Your numb, spider-venom affected arm chooses an inopportune moment to give out and you crumple to base of the ramp. 

When you manage to rearrange your limbs you hear the roar of the damn chainsaw close behind you. 

_ Very _ close behind you. 

“Whatever you want,” you say, “I can do.” 

“Turn around slowly,” the exorcist says. 

You comply, and lie yourself flat on the ramp. The whirring chainsaw is now at your throat. 

Composed of ether or no, a decapitation is  _ definitely _ going to kill you dead. 

“Are there any more of you around, Arachnid’s Grip?” she asks. 

Oh, that’s  _ rich _ . 

“Why should I answer your questions? You’re going to kill me either way.” 

The exorcist tightens her grip on the chainsaw, and it moves ever so slightly closer. 

“I’ll use this,” she moves it again, for emphasis. You shrink back the little bit you’re able despite yourself. 

She lifts the chainsaw back to a less uncomfortable distance for you. “But I can use the gun if you cooperate. So now please answer me. Are you the only spirit operating in this area,  Arachnid’s Grip?” 

_ Spirit _ ? 

She thinks that you’re a spirit. No, she thought you were a spirit the  _ entire time she was after you _ . Three goddamn towns, and she thinks you’re a spirit?

You almost want to laugh.

Before you can answer, you’re interrupted by footsteps, heralding a very familiar, scratchy voice. 

“Wait! She’s serving the Arachnea Tyraneus!” 

The chainsaw is switched off. The stationary blade comes to a stop on your throat. 

Dragon girl. You neither expected nor wanted her to show up now. 

“The Arachnea Tyraneus,” the exorcist says, faint. “The Nightmare Queen.” 

“Yeah, I know,” dragon girl pants, catching her breath. “And I bet she knows where the Arachnea is.” 

“That’s certainly quite probable,” the exorcist says, looking at you calculatively. 

_ Fuck you, dragon girl _ , you think to yourself bitterly. 

**> Be the dragon girl (a short while ago)**

You’re just departing the Asian grocer, having gotten three bottles of rice wine, when you walk straight past with a tall, olive-complexioned woman in a black trench coat. 

In one coat pocket, you think you see a gun. When she shifts around you  _ think _ you see something else, something bulky shifting under the skirt. 

Her presence unnerves you. It especially unnerves you when you overhear her asking about unusual activity, missing persons, or any strange accidents. 

Strange person, armed with a gun and what is  _ probably _ some sort of melee weapon, asking after odd happenings. She must be an exorcist, here to deal with a spirit. 

You hope that she’s not after your patron. 

Who would hire someone to come after your patron? Your first thought is the mining company processing coal on the other side of the lake. You’d thought they went down- you and your patron together had made sure that their operations went as badly as they could, that they had to contend with unexplained equipment failure and inclement weather and strangely persistent fog. You had to do it; they’d have fouled the lake, and killed your patron with it. 

Did one of the higher-ups have suspicions? A contact who could find an exorcist for that? 

You stop wondering when you see her produce a blurry photograph as part of her queries. 

As you circle back, she asks, “Have you see this woman?” 

It is the cambion from the nightclub. 

“She was in Moonsetter two nights ago,” you answer truthfully. “Why’re you looking?” 

The exorcist rifles in the briefcase she’s holding and hands you a binder. 

You leaf through it. Rumours, testimonies, missing people articles from a number of larger towns and minor cities. 

An account described her simply as ‘the hot girl’- who’d proceeded to flirt with his friend, giving him a peck on the cheek. She’d watched, quietly knowing, as the man proceeded to win game after game of blackjack. When everyone got sick of losing they’d switched to poker, he’d managed to win with a perfect royal straight flush. 

He’d left the pub on a high, hot girl on his arm, and then he was never heard from ever again. 

Town bulletins. Print-outs from websites. Victims were either spirited away, or seduced with improbable strings of wins. 

“She’ll be at 57 Callister Avenue.” 

You look up from the binder to see the whitest girl in Hartewell strolling down the road towards the two of you. 

You recognise her. You grope for her name. Some kind of flower? “Rose.” 

She waves. “I’d like to go for a walk with you.” 

In the daylight, you can see that her eyes are purple. It’s unnerving, for some reason. You try not to let that show. 

“I’d like to know how you came across that information,” the exorcist says. 

Rose grins. “Magic.” 

The exorcist levels a flat stare at her, and sighs. “How reliable is it?” 

Rose’s grin widens. “I’m never wrong. What’s your name, spider hunter?” 

The exorcist frowns. “Kanaya.” 

“I like it. What about you, dragon supplicant?” 

“Terezi.” You reply as curtly as Kanaya. 

Rose retrieves a pocket watch from jacket and flips it open. “You’d better go now, Kanaya, if you want to catch her. Just an inkling I have.” 

Kanaya looks to Rose uncertainly, and then glances at you. 

You shrug. “I’ve taken her advice exactly once and I’m glad I did.” 

“It’s a little premature to tell now,” Rose replies. You do not like what you think she’s implying. 

As Kanaya leaves, Rose turns to you. “You let her go.” 

It doesn’t sound as accusing as you feel you deserve. “I’m not sure if I should have.” 

Rose seems more thoughtful than anything. “You’re the only judge of that at the end of the day, I think.” 

“She’s done some horrible shit.” 

Rose nods. “I’m not surprise. What do you know about her progenitor?” 

The spider spirit. “It’s old, and insatiable. I didn’t manage to find anything else on it.” 

“I suppose your resources didn’t mention her cambions. Pity.” 

You look to her, horrified. “She’s got more than one?” 

“Not at the same time,” Rose clarifies. “When they fail to keep up with her appetite, she consumes them. I’d imagine that this particular creature knows that.” 

You frown, and shake your head. “That doesn’t excuse her. She still, knowingly, willfully fed a bunch of people to this, this…” 

“Monstrosity.  _ Lusus Naturae _ , if you want to be academic about it.” 

“Yeah.” 

What more is there to be said? The Arachnea needs to die, and the cambion, though unwilling… 

Rose takes the binder from you, curious. “Kanaya seems to have left this, in her haste.” 

You narrow your eyes at her. “Did you-” 

“No,” Rose says. “That is not the nature of a cleric of Cassandra. We can only deliver prophecy. Fate is out of the hands of mortals.” 

She smiles to herself, as though privy to a private joke, as she pages through the binder. As she flips to the section covering the cambion’s MO, she raises her eyebrows. 

“Luck is not the domain of the Nightmare Queen,” she says. 

“That did strike me as a bit odd,” you admit. “But this whole thing has been weird from the start, so… ” 

You wait for Rose to finish reading the whole thing. 

“If the Arachnea loses this cambion, I don’t think she’ll survive, barring a lot of creativity on her part,” she concludes. “She’s simply too large and conspicuous to hunt without drawing a lot of undue attention on herself, and any cambion she spawns is unlikely to keep up with the output of this one. At the very worst, we’ll put her back for a century, at least.” 

“So we let the cambion die,” you say. The words taste like ash in your mouth. The cambion has gleefully, indiscriminately led enthralled men, dazed women to their deaths- but no. Did she ever want this? 

Rose looks towards the main road, the direction leading to the address she’d given. “The likelihood of a good outcome is perhaps higher with the cambion dead. But I wonder how the Arachnea Tyraneus would fare if her cambion turns against her.”

You frown. “Is that even possible?” 

Rose shrugs. “I’d thought not. But I also thought that cambions don’t have domains.” 

The memory of the cambion, eyes empty, telling you to kill her, comes unbidden. 

“Is that a prediction, Rose?” you ask. “That the spider will die if we kill her cambion? And she… won’t, if the cambion lives?” 

“I can’t make predictions on command, Terezi. My patron gifts me with insight whenever she deems it necessary.” 

Rose looks at you, expression placid. 

“But if the exorcist. If Kanaya gets there. The cambion is dead.” 

“Yes. I don’t need insight to know that. Kanaya has clearly been hunting her for a very long time.” 

Something in your chest rolls over at the thought. Rose watches you carefully. 

_ It’s not fair, _ you think. You can’t stand it. You shove your shopping in Rose’s arms. “Hold my wine. Where are they?” 

She repeats the address. “You can make it there if you run,” she adds, giving you a significant look. 

You run as fast as your legs will carry you.  

**> Be the exorcist, in the present**

You’ve hunted the supernatural being you call the scourge over one month and two towns and tonight, you find out that she doesn’t even have a name. 

You feel like this happens to be an extremely accurate reflection of your career as an exorcist so far. You’ve spent more time on wild goose chases than not, but the one time you catch up to something that exists, you find that it isn’t even what you thought it was. 

Terezi assures you that you have her full respect. This cambion, she tells you, has existed for the better part of the century, killed countless people, and seems to have a diversifying array of tricks. To apprehend her is honestly impressive. 

All the same, how on earth did you fail to notice the enormous spider spirit she serves? 

You have restraints for spirits, and you bring them out. Ropes in slipknots, for those pesky shape-changing spirits. Chains. A pair of handcuffs. 

“That should be sufficient,” you say. “As far as I know, she doesn’t have any other form, other than the troll, and she can’t glamour because we both know what she really looks like. Also, I shot her glamour.” 

Terezi looks at you quizzically. “The troll?” 

“It is… Oh, forget about it. Just a name for something with grey skin and horns, I honestly don’t know where I got that.” 

She hums thoughtfully, looking at the scourge. “It fits, I think.” 

The scourge seems to bristle. “Take a picture, you fucking creeps.” 

Terezi ignores that. “Do we have your full cooperation in this? I promise that you’ll walk free if you take us to your spirit. I won’t have you swear it, for obvious reasons.” 

“I don’t have a fucking choice,” the scourge says. She spits at your feet. Thankfully, your boots are not so distressed that it’ll get through. It pays to have good boots in this line of work. 

You’re also rather unsure about this plan of action. A cleric and a novice exorcist going off to fight a monstrosity several centuries old seems like the start of a blatantly misinformed young adult novel, or a joke. 

“I think we should gather our full resources before attempting to find the Arachnea,” you point out. Terezi tilts her head, and concedes. 

“I’ll take the cambion up to the lake,” she says, decisive. “She’ll be… secure, there.” 

You see the scourge’s face scrunch in rage before it flattens into an apathetic “whatever.” 

Interesting. Did something happen before?

“I’d like to go there and check, if you’d allow me.” You don’t add that you’d go there irregardless of her permission or approval, but you’re sure that she gets the picture. 

Terezi nods. She seems distracted by something. Occasionally, she fiddles at her collar, frowning at the scourge. The cambion. 

Her eyes rove across the quiet neighbourhood, past closed shops and parked cars and neatly trimmed hedges, evidently seeing something that you cannot. 

She freezes abruptly. “Spider,” she breathes. 

You scarcely have a moment to process it before the brick wall to your right just crumples. 

The black coat you wear is a gift from your elder sister. She gifted it to you because, firstly, it is classy, and classy was of, quote, the “utmost importance to the modern exorcist”, unquote. Secondly, blood and ichor stains alike are mostly invisible on black, which meant that you could spend less time freaking out the public and more time slaying things. And lastly, it would serve as a fantastic shield against things like flying debris, dust, and magical spirit venom. 

Terezi isn’t so lucky. She’d blocked the spray of venom with her arms and you hear her swearing. 

But there isn’t time to take inventory. You yell, “Run, Terezi! Get away!”

Then you pull out your chainsaw. 

The Arachnea rears over you. Her front legs slice through the air, and she stands almost as tall as the shop’s facade that she just tore down. 

You wait for a leg to come down, and you swing. 

You get her at one of her joints. 

While it would be nice to have enchanted weapons, unfortunately, magic is, to quote a friend, “fake as shit”. It appears however that simple man-made steel is sufficient as long as it is moving at sixty miles per hour. The leg segment comes off, and you throw yourself back before her other leg can come spearing down at you. 

You’re not going to delude yourself. Facing a giant spider that is happy to expend energy to keep attacking, it is not likely that you will hold up very well in a proper fight. You are simply buying time for Terezi to get distance. 

Unfortunately, the Arachnea has different ideas. She raises her massive abdomen and spits another glob at you. Not venom. Silk. 

The sticky filaments jam your weapon and sticks your limbs to your coat, and then she spits more, heaping white silk over you until you’re functionally immobilised. 

You turn your head only to see her scuttle  _ impossibly _ quickly, placing herself before Terezi. With a brief click of her mandibles she cuts a length of chain between Terezi and the scourge, and then picks up your ally. 

Your heart sinks. You’ve accepted the idea of dying on the job, but you hadn’t considered collateral losses. 

The spider picks its way over to you, and drops Terezi on you. She’s deceptively heavy for someone who looks like a bundle of knives and masking tape. 

Then the webbing starts. 

_ This is not fine _ , you think, furious. You’re completely helpless in the face of your impending doom and it is far worse than anything you could have envisioned. 

The spider stops. You wonder why, and crane your head. Silk drapes across your field of vision but you can still recognise the silhouette of a person. 

That person is holding a book. They let it fall open, and retrieve something. A thin slab. 

They drop that slab on the ground and it shatters. 

You swear you see the spider  _ flinch _ . 

“You know what’s next, don’t you?” You recognise her- she’s that girl from earlier, the one that gave you directions. Rose. 

You feel Terezi tense up above you, whispering something that sounds like swearing and a long string of  _ no _ . 

The spider moves, but Rose pulls out a knife, and holds it over her wrist. 

“Don’t come any closer, Arachnea. I don’t believe you want this to happen.” 

It dawns on you what is happening, and you join Terezi’s swearing. 

“Tick. Tock,” she says. 

The spider freezes. 

You try to convince yourself that she isn’t trying to call the Lord of Time. You fail to convince yourself because that is  _ exactly what she is doing, so what the fuck, Rose _ . 

“Tick. Tock. Tick.” 

The spider takes two steps back. Even the lusus naturae thinks that she’s a fucking lunatic. 

“Begone,” Rose intones. 

The spider scrambles away, hissing the entire time. 

The street is silent for a long time. 

“Your cambion is gone,” Rose observes. She comes to where the two of you are stacked untidily on the road, and begins cutting you out with the webs. 

The first thing Terezi does, on standing up, is to slap Rose. 

“You fucking lunatic,” she hisses. “ _ You don’t call him for anything.”  _

“It was very unlikely that I could have called any reality destroying monster to this realm,” Rose points out, all calm and reasonable. “Aside from a number of technicalities that I deliberately disobeyed, I also do not have the conviction needed to-” 

“We don’t risk this, though,” Terezi says. Her face is still pale. “We  _ never _ risk this under any circumstance!” 

Rose rolls her eyes. “Tock.” 

Your arms are free, now, and you have to stop yourself from slapping her. Terezi looks like she's going through the same process, all clenched fists and disbelief.

Nothing happens.  

Terezi slumps like a puppet with cut strings, buries her face in her hands and laughs. It is a wild and screechy cackle, neither pleasant nor joyous. 

“God, I can't believe we survived that,” she says, upon raising her head. “Let’s  _ not _ do that again.” 

“Your wine is in my car, by the way,” Rose says, nonchalant. 

Terezi straightens slightly and bumps her fist against Rose’s shoulder. You eye her back with a slight measure of resentment. Your legs are still encased in sticky silk and your coat is completely and utterly ruined. 

Still working to free you, Rose says, “I’m sorry for terrifying you, but I believed it necessary. Would you come to my apartment for sanctuary?” 

In the light of the lamp-post, you can see her face, very carefully focused on her work. She bites her lip in concentration, almost hard enough to draw blood, and she's very carefully not looking at you. 

It hits you that she's inviting you over to her home. Presumably alone. This is going to be your first night in this city and you'll be going home with this- this  _ really pretty _ , but really goddamn crazy girl. 

You don’t know what possesses you, but you say yes.


	3. and i dream so blue

**> Rose: bring the exorcist home**

Standing two feet from you is a breathtaking woman. She stands tall and sure, and her dark brown eyes cut through the street like she’s hunting for prey. Her profile has the grace of Venus di Milo, the poise of Athena Mattei. You hear her speak and her voice chimes clear and crystalline like metal on glass.

She's striking.

She’s asking a question and you know the answer. You’re likely the only person that can give her the answer. You find it hard to tear your eyes off her and you lament, for a moment that she’s an exorcist, that she will hunt down her quarry and leave this place and you will likely never see her again-

 _SHE WILL NOT LIVE THROUGH TONIGHT_ , your patron proclaims in your head.

You run through a list of rebuttals and then force yourself to believe it.

Her name is Kanaya Maryam, and as she walks away from you the horror settles over your chest like a vice. Terezi is in your face and you say what you need to in order to send her away.

You need to get to your books.

You find them still alive, but fear makes you reckless. As the spider retreats, you force yourself to be calm. To think.

Your patron is never wrong, but there are ways to mitigate the impact.

So you invite her back to the safest place you know.

“Why are we going to your dwelling?” she asks. She speaks with precision- every word neatly ended before the next begins. On someone else, this might be patronising, but on her it’s- it's just her elocution. It’s charming.

She asked a question. Right.

“Have you dealt with many clerics, Kanaya?” you ask. She shakes her head.

“I confess that I’m rather new to the business. Exorcism requires a lot of… focus, I suppose.”

You nod. “But I imagine that you’d know some basics.”

“Well. Yes. You provide a spiritual entity with a space of worship and swear a vow of fealty, and in return you access their gifts.”

That’s entirely correct. “Additionally, in the sanctuary of my patron, I am untouchable.”

Kanaya nods. “The sanctuary law. Yes. Also, I’m not sure if this would be rude to ask, but… who is your patron?”

It’s not rude to ask. You answer. “Cassandra.”

She blinks at you. “Prophecy?”

“Inviolable prophecy,” you correct her. “But cursed to never be believed.”

She frowns. “That’s odd. I believed you. So did Terezi.”

That’s a question that comes up often. “She’s the one with the curse. Hence why we’re far and few between. To be a cleric is to have faith in a spirit, but to be a cleric of Cassandra is to throw yourself headlong into doubt on nothing but faith.”

“I… suppose? So we believe you, but you… disbelief her?”

The voice of goddess rings through your head.

 _CALAMITY IN THE SANCTUARY_.

That’s ridiculous. You’re untouchable in your sanctuary.

“The curse is that my mind will generate every possible excuse to disbelief her. Even though she’s always right.”

Kanaya stares at you. “But… how?”

_HER HUMANITY CEASES AT THE STROKE OF MIDNIGHT._

You look over Kanaya. “Are you human?”

She _looks_ rather human. She frowns at you, quizzical. “Yes. You’re a cleric, so you should be able to see past glamour, right?”

You blink into spirit-sight and peer at her. She isn’t wearing one. So she’s human, or something that looks very close to human.

Right?

You sigh. “The truth is, it’s always easier to doubt than to believe. The future is stupid! It’s never not completely ridiculous and convoluted.”

Kanaya nods, thoughtful. “I suppose if I told my younger self that my sister would become a vampire, she’d think it was ridiculous, too.”

“Your sister is a vampire?” Do vampires even exist?

She smiles wryly. “It’s a long story.”

The two of you arrive at your apartment. You forget where you put your keys and you try to pat yourself down surreptitiously as you ascend the stairs, but you still feel Kanaya’s gaze on you.

She smiles. You find yourself forgetting to breathe for a second.

And then you find your keys and you’re in. You lead her to the spare bedroom that serves as your patron’s domain.

Space for power. You give up that part of the apartment entirely- it has no bed, no chairs, absolutely nothing to make it habitable to you because that’s the point- it’s not for you. The only piece of furniture in this room is an short little coffee table holding a white statue of her.

Cassandra, as sculpted, stares straight ahead into empty space. A snake curls over her shoulders, hissing into her ear. Ashes lie scattered at her feet and flames lick at her robes.

You’re pretty proud of yourself. You spent three days setting up the table and a week in here with a tub of plaster of Paris, bringing your vision to life with your hands. You’re… not uncomfortable, but at the same time, you need to be frugal, so you bought the table from Ikea and got a cheap hacksaw.

Thankfully, it’s the thought that counts with spirits. In fact, if you had the resources you used to have, you'd probably still put in the time. You'd get a block of marble instead, that's all.

Devotion, time, and effort. Those things come equal to every human and those are the things that matter to spirits.

You’ve made some modifications to the coffee table, and as you kneel in front of your patron you reach into your pocket, find your coin purse, and feed a quarter into the gap above the drawer. You consider Kanaya’s presence in this space, and fish out another quarter.

“Money offerings?” she asks.

You fumble and drop the coin because of course you do. It slips under the coffee table because of course it does.

That was the last coin in your purse, damn it. So instead, you turn to Kanaya.

“Votive offering,” you explain. “I cut a hole in the drawer and then glued it shut. It’s an old ritual, a powerful one, because it relies on a very instinctive, human tendency toward reciprocity.”

“So you pay her for protection?”

“And power. Yes. Compensation in the form of devotion and sacrifice. I can’t use the money if it’s in there, so it’s not purely symbolic.”

Kanaya frowns. “But it is symbolic. She can’t use it either. She’s not an American who lives here, currency is pretty worthless to her.”

“Well, that’s true. But in a very non-symbolic manner it has an impact on my finances. The important thing to her is when I put money or anything else in there, I can’t expect to use it.”

Kanaya is looks doubtful. You elaborate.

“Burnt incense, cups of wine, a victim dragged off into the night- they’re all consumed even though beings of ether don't need material sustenance because for them to be here, impacting the material world and _creating_ stuff that affects it they need something from the world. Symbolic sustenance, in a way.”

“So the only meaningful symbols are real symbols. Actions or offerings that have a material cost.” She’s still frowning.

“What about other costs? Social, reputational?”

You shrug. “Haven’t had the occasion to test that out. But I know time is one of the most effective symbolic offerings, that’s why so many spirits have rituals and rites for their worship.”

“Still makes sense, I suppose. Giving up the time is a sacrifice you make- you can’t make money or do other things in that time.”

“Time is a weird area,” you admit. “It’s got a bit of tradition associated with it- giving up time for some blessing or divine intervention. Another big one that gets tossed around is legacy- think giving up your firstborns and such.”

Kanaya shudders. “Wow, that sort of thing still happens?”

Yes, it does. You know it entirely too well. You kind of regret bringing it up, so you just shrug and let the question hang.

The silence quickly gets very awkward. You think of something.

“So, vampires? They exist?” You mentally kick yourself. Fantastic opener, Rose.

Kanaya sighs. “Long story short, my sister’s a vampire. No, I don’t know how. I just know that she was declared legally dead, we were making funeral preparations, and then five hours before the funeral she rang our doorbell and asked to be invited in.”

“Are you sure it was her?” you ask. “The closest thing I can think of is a spirit stealing her identity.”

Kanaya sighs. “I don’t think it matters now, anyway.”

That’s a cryptic statement that sure doesn’t invite any kind of response, but you open your mouth to say something anyway.

Before you can speak, you are interrupted.

_CALAMITY IN THE SANCTUARY._

_THE SPINNER STALKS US TONIGHT._

Surely she isn’t referring to what already happened? It’s prophecy, not hindsight.

And the Arachnea knows better than to come after _you_ , especially in your sacred sanctuary. It may look beastly, but surely it has some measure of intelligence to have survived for this long-

_TEN SECONDS. GET UP, SEER._

You waste two of those seconds arguing with yourself before you stand up.

“I’m sorry that I did not heed your words, my lady.”

_NO ONE EVER DOES._

_UNBELIEVABLE._

Before the ten seconds are up you hear a loud scratching, almost like nails scraping on the walls.

“Kanaya, I think you should-”

 _Stand back_. That gets lost in the crash as an explosion of plaster and splinters and dust explode from the exterior wall of the room.

There’s a series of ripping, splintering noises. You’re in your sanctuary, you can’t possibly expect to be attacked here, and both you and Kanaya are unarmed because you didn’t listen to Cassandra, and-

_I WILL GUIDE YOU, CHILD._

_SPIDER BITCH WILL RUE THE DAY SHE ATTACKED MY CLERIC IN MY SANCTUARY._

The righteous anger burning in her words warm you. Her voice fades and you see the future. You see it vivid and bright and it’s surely, definitely what happens in the next ten minutes.

The Arachnea rips through the wall, mandibles clicking. She barrels forward at an impossible speed. You know where she will be so you get out of the way, but Kanaya doesn’t have the benefit of foresight so a wickedly sharp leg plunges through her midsection like a skewer punching through paper.

Rage lights you incandescent- you and your deity, cleric and god. You dodge another swipe and avoid looking at the shifting red pattern on the spider’s abdomen as you throw yourself out of reach. You fling yourself behind the statue of your patron and the spider smashes straight through her, intent on prey.

You.

She lunges at you but you heft the coffee table to block her, coins rattling and sliding around inside. One set of legs smash through the table and reduces it to splinters.

And inside the shower of quarters is hacksaw you used to put the table together. You dive for it and roll out of the way of a jet of venom.

Now you have a weapon. You watch it click its mandibles a few times, and step forward.

You step back. Not yet, not like this.

It circles you, and you mirror it. You’re happy to do this all day but the spider isn’t.

It lunges at you. You duck under its reach again, grab onto the centre of its body and saw at the red gash in the middle of its underbelly.

That is her book lung. Her breathing apparatus. Your grip hand is sore and your entire upper body burns and you are absolutely breathless but you’re here, working your hacksaw into her lung and you are doing some _damage_.

It screeches. It’s definitely hurting.

It should be. It fucking killed Kanaya, and it defaced a statue of your goddess. Cassandra seethes inside your head and you plunge the blade into the gap.

The spider flails wildly. You fall off, winded as you hit the ground.

The arachnea lets out a final screech, and retreats, leaving you alone with a cooling corpse.

You glance at Kanaya. Her face is beginning to drain of colour, and soon she will be glowing a pearlescent, bloodless white.

You see the next three minutes and you can figure out enough.

**> Terezi: Thank your god**

You make excuses after dinner and make your way up the mountain.

When you get to the lake’s entrance, you refill your patron’s cup with the wine you bought. You zip up your jacket- the residual heat of the day fades fast, this high up.  

Then you climb the steps.

It is night, and you sit at the bank of the lake until the fog rolls in. The moonlight lights it all silver-blue, and it is beautiful.

Your arm throbs beneath your jacket and bandages, so you kick off your shoes, roll up your sleeves, and get close enough to soak your aching arm into the lake. Mist forms, soothing.

Magically inflicted wounds respond far better to magical treatment.

There's a million things in the world seeking to besmirch this place, this sanctuary, but looking over its flat expanse and listening to its waves you know that everything you've done to protect this place is worth it.

Footsteps alert you to the presence of an intruder. You drape your hand over your lap casually, bringing your dagger into reach.

“I know you heard me,” a grumpy voice says.

You look up. The cambion shuffles forward, hands buried deep in the pockets of her jeans. She's foregone the glamour, and moonlight brings out her high cheekbones, casts shadows over her gleaming yellow eyes.

She's scowling when you meet her eyes.

“You've sworn,” you remind her. “What the hell do you want?”

Her face contorts.

“I want to know what _you_ ,” she stabs a long claw tipped finger in your direction, “want from me!”

Hang on, what?

“Pardon?” you ask.

“Not that I’m not grateful to be alive, but…” She tosses her voluminous hair over her shoulder to better stare you down. “What the heck was _that_ about?”

You squint at her. “What?”

She adopts a whiny, nasally voice. “ _Oh noooooooo, don’t kill her, she’s serving a bigger badder monster, oh, I’ll just take her up to my mountain_ \- so what was _that_ about?”

That isn’t a good, or even passing imitation of you. You wonder if you should be offended but mostly you find it… weirdly cute.

You suppose that her question is fair, though.

“I don’t think you should pay for the sins of your mother,” you say quietly.

She freezes, and then stomps over to where you sit, and draws herself up to her full height- an impressive height, looming over you.

“Listen,” she hisses, “I don’t need you pity, and I don’t need your help. And-”

She narrows her baleful yellow eyes. “What make you think you can turn me against my mother? She made me, and I raised her. I worked _tirelessly_ to get her up to this size, and you know what? I’m fucking-”

Her voice cracks. “I’m fucking proud of that.”

The strain in her voice undermines the forced vehemence of her words.

You keep the same tone of voice. “Are you really?”

She grabs you by the throat, picking you up with no effort. Fog roils above your heads threateningly, but you’re at ease.

You don’t think she’ll hurt you. She’s just… boldly gesturing.  

Her face is very, very close to yours. You can see the vivid blue of her pupils against the her glowing yellow sclera.

“I’m the villain of this story,” she says. “Boogeyman in the dark. I don’t have a choice in that matter but I can do is to put in everything I’ve got for it. I can’t pick what I am but I’m going to do it _well_.”

Nodding, you motion for her to continue.

“They call me the Arachnid’s Grip, the hunting appendage of the Nightmare Queen. I’m the greatest cambion ever lived. They fear me, and you’re a fucking idiot if you don’t.”

You are firm as you speak. “I think you’re wrong. I don’t think you’re just a spider limb. You’re your own… being. You have your own domain. And I think it’s past time you had your own name.”

“You don’t know what you’re doing, dragon girl.” Her voice is a breathless whisper.

“Terezi,” you correct her. “That’s my name.”

Her claws dig into your throat. “You’re sworn not to harm me,” you point out again.

She snarls in frustration, and lets you go. You get your feet under yourself in time and you don’t crumple to the ground.

Riling her up is… weirdly satisfying. She makes it so easy.

Her figure casts a long shadow as she paces, pointing her scowl away from you and into the far distance.

“Well, _Terezi_ , you should know that the situation is very simple! If I die, she starves. If she dies, I dissipate into nothing because I’m tied to her, it’s _who I am_!”

“And if you stop what you’re doing, she’ll eat you,” you add.

She runs a hand through her tangled hair, frowning.

“I don’t think it will help,” she says. “There was a spirit of hope who use to be a cambion, too. He got sawed in half by that exorcist. Totally dead. Being my own spirit doesn’t mean shit all.”

You frown. “Was that the Columbine spirit? Over-entitlement, ego, and violence?”

“Oh yeah, all of those things, but he liked to call himself Abandoned Hope.”

“You’re better than that asshole,” you say, decisive.

The cambion snorts. “Obviously.”

She looks down at her arm. You do, too. There’s a wavering to its form, a part of her arm being slightly insubstantial.

Just as you did for yourself, you summon some mist and smooth over her injury.

You think. “I think your essence is something lucky, clever, and triumphant. A dice landing on double-sixes, twice. A royal straight flush in hand at your first ever game of poker. Being held at gunpoint but miraculously, the gun jams.”

 _Luck at the expense of other people_ , you think, but don’t say.

“Vriska,” she says. “Vriska Serket.”

It’s all sibilants and hard edges and you know it fits her perfectly. She seems surprised. You hold your jade and see her aura shifting kaleidoscopically, vacillating between the crawling legs of the nightmare spider and lucky coin tosses landing on the edge.

Vriska grins. She hunches over and a pair of brilliant blue butterfly wings push out from between her shoulder blades.

“I should have done this way sooner,” she says, disbelieving.

She turns to you. Studies you for a long moment. Then she takes to the air, cackling.

“Bet you can’t do this, dragon girl!”

You smirk. A mist-dragon crawls up onto the shore, beckoning you to get on. You rise to her altitude, and grab her from behind.

“Can so,” you say into her pointed grey ear. She breaks out of your hold, squints at you.

A moment later, your dagger slips out of your jacket, and you have to dive sharply to catch it before it can plunge deep into the icy cold lake. Up in the sky, the newborn spirit of luck and targeted misfortune sends shrill peals of laughter over the lake.

After a bit more aerial roughhousing, the two of you land. She sweeps her hair over her shoulder dramatically, and you feel you’ve caught a glimpse of who she really is, of who she _should_ be. Glorious, bombastic, and a little larger-than-life.

It’s getting late, and you really don’t want this moment to end.

“You’re staring.” She looks at you now without hostility, just curiousity.

“I have to head home,” you say. “Well. Uh. Good night, Vriska.”

“What?” she squawks. “You’re just going to… leave?”

“I have to, if I want to sleep at some point,” you point out. “I don’t actually live here.”

Vriska looks ready to argue, but seems to reconsider. “Fiiiiiiiine. God, humans are so lame.”

You have to hide a smile as you descend the mountain. Tonight, the weight of tradition doesn’t hold you down. The future isn’t just a vague blur that you’re apathetic towards. Your mind races through possibilities and solutions.

You’re going to fight the Arachnea Tyraneus, and you feel like something has just clicked into place.

Your phone emits your text notification tone and the rest of your night goes to hell.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A cambion stands on the shores of a lake. Though it was 80 years ago she was given life, it is only today she will be given a name!
> 
> finally, the advertised vrisrezi. Happy Easter, everyone. I have a one week break from uni and you can bet that I'm not gonna spend it wisely at all- I'm gonna finish my self-indulgent fanfic and not do any school work at all because of course I am. 
> 
> For the people who are here for Aradia and/or Sollux- don't worry. Next chapter.


	4. i'll always remember

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Illustrated chapter! I pretty much never do this but words cannot describe what I have decided is hands down, my favourite, absolutely favourite spirit. 
> 
> PS: please tell me if it shows up for you! I'm not really sure if my image hosting works properly. 
> 
> Enjoy!

**> Be the Shepherd of Darwin Valley**

You cannot be the Shepherd. The Shepherd is a spirit of terrible might and power, the spirit which resides over death and decay.

It will drive mortal minds mad, to be the Shepherd.

Fortunately, you are in many ways no longer mortal.

Your name was Aradia Megido and you are dead. Your existence is but a pale simulation of life. You do not breathe or sleep. You can imbibe food and water but you do not need to and you can barely taste it, anyway, so what’s the point?

You can feel it, the currents of time pounding under all things. You can reach out under the physical layer of things and jam up the gears that grind everything, eventually, down to nothing.

This is only a mere shadow of what she can do.

She reminds you constantly that her power is loaned to you. Your life is loaned to you. You are the bargaining chip that the Shepherd swings over your friend’s heads, the leverage she uses to extract life and time from them.

You feel nothing. Your death already feels distant, for all that it wasn’t all that long ago. But time is relative and everything is constantly disintegrating under the might of thermodynamics, so.

It really puts things into perspective.

At least you’re literally-dead-but-sorta-alive, instead of being literally-and-actually-dead.

You are with Sollux tonight. You are with him most nights, and although you were very fond of him your constant companionship in the present is partially driven by the Shepherd. She feels a little… something. Every time Sollux is reminded of your condition, things feel a little lighter, and your power feels surer.

And then there is the Contract, the ineffable spiritual tether that binds the Shepherd, and by proxy, you, to him. 

Tonight, you sit at Sollux’s dining table, browsing the Internet listlessly. You have a lot of time, now, to be on the internet, on the account of not needing to eat, sleep, or anything else really.

Turns out the dead don’t need to worry about the rising costs of living.

Sollux is eating a late dinner at eleven at night because he forgot to leave the computer lab, again, and you forgot that mortals get hungry and can’t just stare at computer screens forever, again. You are acutely aware of time, now, but not in normal increments.

Like now- it has been ten minutes since he removed his plate of leftovers from the microwave. The particles vibrate with thermal energy. The energy has decayed, is decaying, and will decay to room temperature, and the ever-present living bacteria will break down the sugars and fibres and protein on the plate into simpler, less entropically expensive substances, and then they in turn will die to become less energetically unstable, but before that Sollux lifts a forkful of food and puts it in his mouth and swallows.

There’s a very similar process that happens in his body, and the spirit whose body you are borrowing is eager to watch the biological machinery that is him fail gradually, slowly, under the might of entropy and time.

All things are dying and time only goes forward. All things but you, you poor, already dead girl.

Sollux puts his fork down, scraping it against the plate slightly.

“Aradia,” he says. He sounds so serious.

You look up from the laptop. You’re using the ancient bucket of bolts that used to run your shared Minecraft server.

He must be thinking about you being dead, because you feel powerful. The Shepherd loans you a little bit of telekinesis and right now you could draw all the knives from the block in his kitchen and throw them across the room hard enough to punch through the wall. Your control is sharpening, too. You could probably impale a fly, a gnat, a speck of dust, as easy as breathing.

The thoughts that go through you tend to be violent, these days. It must be all the vengeful dead that the Shepherd collects. You wonder if you are just another one of her ghosts, angry at life.

Sollux asks, “Do you regret me making that contract?”

Whenever he brings up the contract your entire being rings. You resonate to the pulse of him, the contractor, and to the object focus of the contract- the nonfunctional smartphone in his pocket, the phone he always keeps on his person no matter what.

Sollux doesn’t get this, ever. It’s just another reminder that whatever you are now, mortal is no longer it.

As the magical resonance of the Contract die away, you shut down the laptop and consider. It doesn’t take very long for you to answer.

“No,” you say. “Not at all.”

He seems surprised. “But…”

You know what he’s getting at. Your incessant moodiness, the silence that now marks your time with people. You used to talk a lot, you think- but you can’t remember what you talked about at all.

But what is the alternative?

You shake your head. “I don’t regret it because even though I’m like that now, I think I’m happy that I still exist.”

You watch him. You used to be very fond of this boy, and it’s hard to stay fond of him when you’re not fond of anything at all. But you try.

Your power is the strongest it’s ever been, you think. You think that maybe you can lift furniture, start disassembling the house.

Empathy is hard when you don’t have the biochemical apparatus that creates feelings anymore but you guess that he must be upset.

So you go over there, put a hand over his head, and try to smile reassuringly. You don’t feel anything but for the sakes of the people you used to be fond of, you try to pretend.

“I’m okay with this, Sollux,” you say, and you mean it. “Truly. I’m okay.”

You’re always okay. You will be okay until Sollux dies, and which fulfills the stipulations of the contract. After that, you will be nothing.

Your power doesn’t wane. You try very hard to think of something to help.

What did you like to do, back when you were alive, anyway? What was something made you happy when you had a brain that felt things, when you had a body that could be influenced by matter?

“Let’s go out,” you suggest.

**(Some months ago… but not very many)**  
**> Sollux: go hiking **

The valley is garbage for hiking. The woods breed mosquitos, the sun’s right in your eyes because you’re marching up the east side of the mountain in the morning like a pair of assholes, and it is so, so humid. If gym is the purgatory of exercise, hiking is the hell.

This is objective fact that Aradia doesn't seem to get. Even Terezi had begged off on this little expedition, and Terezi happens to hike up the other, sheerer face of this mountain every goddamn morning. But somehow you found yourself agreeing to accompany Aradia to the excavation sites in the valley.

The two of you find one of the ‘kissing points’ on the trails, overlooking the shrubland and the woods and of course, the excavation sites- big squares pits, the loamy dirt exposed to the sky.

Leaning over the rails, Aradia points out her favourites. Morbid stuff- burial mounds, gravesites left untouched by the excavators. See that wall? That’s a house- the foundations of it. They think that that’s where the firepit was, and over there are some sleeping quarters, but maybe the people packed up and moved? They couldn’t find any sleeping mats, there, so they might have…

“What’s over there?” you ask, pointing. Inside the pit are rows and rows of something.

“Where?” She follows the line of your finger.

“Oh. That.”

You squint against the sun. “What’s the deal with those rows? The only thing that isn’t rows is that lump up the front, is that just a big rock?”

“I’ve been reading up on that,” Aradia says. “They’re not sure, but they think that it’s a church.”

A church. “What kind? It’s not another weird clown cult, is it?”

Aradia shakes her head, although you think you spy a hint of a grin. “No, not like the Church of the Mirthful Messiahs. But it’s a bit weird all the same. See that big rock? Is there anything on it?”

“The sun’s in my eyes, AA, I can’t see shit.”

“Oh well. I read that there was a skull on that. A ram’s skull.”

“What, like the goat?”

“Ram.” She draws a pair of spirals on the sides of her head. “You know, with the curly horns.”

You vaguely know. “So, if it’s a church, the rows are pews?”

Aradia frowns. “Perhaps. They say that when they excavated it, they found human remains.”

It’s a little unnerving, the way she says it. “What, for real? Like they’re lying there?”

“No.” She’s doing that spooky thing now, the thing where she speaks all hushed and reverent. She doesn’t realise that she’s doing it, which makes it kind of adorable. But spooky. “They say that the skeletons were stacked upright, like they were all sitting when they died.

You think for a moment and shrug. “Comet hit in the middle of church service. Boom. All died sitting up.”

Aradia snickers. “Possibly. Also, comets don’t hit Earth, meteors hit Earth.”

“Damn, AA, do I seem like an astrophysicist to you? I’m but a humble programmer. I imbibe coffee and shit C++. Leave me be.”

She’s giggling despite herself. You’re always happy to see her laugh- it propagates through her whole body, first her smile blooming bright on her face, then in the shake of her shoulders, the curve of her neck, the way her hair sways in the movement.

_She’s cute_ , you find yourself thinking absently, and then you catch the thought and ruthlessly expunge it. No Captor. Bad Captor. Feelings are for functional people with functional brains.

Aradia studies the digs for a long moment, and says, “Let’s go down there.”

“What?”

“You heard me,” she says. “Let’s go down there.”

“Uh,” you say. You’re not sure how to phrase your objection, besides just a general case of the heebie jeebies. “Okay.”

_The fuck is wrong with you? That’s not an objection!_

You hike down to the valley. Vegetation blocks out the sun, which you’re grateful for. It also blocks your view of the frankly _creepy as hell_ church, which you’re doubly grateful for.

“Why do you want to go down there anyway?” you ask her. Aradia spins back to you, hair flaring in a half-circle.

“Because,” she whispers, low and conspiratorial, “I want to see them.”

“What, the skeletons?”

“No, Sollux,” she says, smiling a little. “The _people_. Remember that they were people before they were dead. I want to see them.”

O… kay. How the hell do you say no to that?

The hiking trail ends abruptly. The two of you emerge out behind old trees and scraggly scrub and the excavations stretch out in front of you. They’re actually pretty deep- you’d probably break something if you fell in.

Planks and boards have been laid out, serving as ramps for easier access. There’s a strip of cardboard that leads straight to the church.

Sun beating down from above, you feel something. Small. Insignificant, in the vast scope of time. The plains and scrubs here are damn near pristine and you think you see people standing out in the field but you blink and they’re gone.

Mirages, or hallucinations from the heat, or something.

“Over here,” Aradia says. Her voice is low.

“Why are we whispering?” you ask, just as quietly.

She shrugs. Before you know it you’re over the sunken church.

Aradia mutters thoughtfully. “No walls.”

“What?”

“No walls,” she repeats. “We know they can and do build walls- there’s that house over there- but this area didn’t have walls.”

“So, what? They just did their prayer out here in the open?”

Aradia shrugs again. Goddamn archeology, you don’t know how she stands it. You need answers. You need to know that you’re correct.

If you voice that, she’d grin and tell you that’s why you’re the coder.

Up this close, you indeed see the skeletons. Mostly adult-sized, you’d guess. Bone doesn’t really hold its shape without flesh, so most of them are just in mounds, but you can see the ribs and spines, kind of.

Aradia can’t get enough of this. She circles around, wide eyes taking everything in. She’d mutter something under her breath, excited, and you don’t want to get in her way so you look around. Find somewhere to stand, or sit, or something. Your legs are sore and your shirt is sticking to your back.

You sit down at the edge of the dig.

Or, well, you try. The earth is soft and crumbly, maybe from the excavation, and the edge crumbles under your butt and you slide down the side of the wall, scrabbling for grip the entire way down.

“Sollux!” Aradia seems alarmed. You should be a little more alarmed.

You look up, searching for her, but a rattling noise draws your attention.

It comes at once from in front of you, and around. Delocalised noise.

It’s the skeletons. Old bones are rising, impossibly, drawing themselves into their rightful places. Piecing themselves back together in bits.

_So this is what ‘scared shitless’ means_ , you think, backing up to the wall of soil behind you. You kind of kick yourself for your idiocy.

There’s a pronounced rattling noise right at the front. In front of the altar rock. You didn’t notice the half-buried mound of bones in front of it but now they rise, shaking off dirt and pebbles.

The ram’s skull inches forward like pennies rattling off a laundromat machine. You think you can see arms; there are some rags at the base of the rock that flutter upwards. There seems to be flesh growing under rags, over the skeleton, like decomposition happening backwards.

The growing bone-figure thing picks up the skull and puts it on. Like a bike helmet. It rises, seemingly effortless, and you _swear_ you see a red-tinged wave of something ripple out from it.

The rest of the skeletons snap together. Every head has turned to look at you.

The ram skull figure drifts towards you. It doesn’t seem to have leg bones, just a collection of rags that might have been robes.

You’re not sure how, but you’re quaking under the gaze of something that doesn’t have eyes.

“Sollux, up here!”

You look up. Aradia throws a length of rope down at you. She’s panting, breathing hard.

Yeah, you’re _out_ of here. You climb like you never did at gym. You climb as fast as you can manage. You think you pulled something as Aradia hauls you up to level ground, but you glance down and determine that _nope,_ you’d rather be up here.

The ram skull figure stands where you were. It raises one literally skeletal arm and points at you. You’re hit with an impression like trees snapping in a windstorm, like the dying breaths over a sickbed, like the squirming of worms beneath your feet.

_Soon_.

It points at Aradia. _Sooner_.

You look at one another, and you fucking book it.

**Months in the past, but not many…**

**> Sollux: Deal with the thing**

A day after you went to the digs, you finally ask Aradia for the name of the ram skull thing. Then you get to work.

The archaeologists call it the Shepherd of Darwin Valley. On the Internet, they call it a _she_ , and named it the Demonness. The last psychopomp, when they don’t want to invoke its name. You don’t blame them.

The witchcraft sites list it as a patron for the domain of mortality- usually with a big red box warning the amateur to click back and never return. The least questionable website gave it a risk rating of 7 out of 8. Its powers are listed on the page, but a good three-quarters of the list is marked unverified.

She can appear wherever and whenever. A lot of other people in the verified encounter links have claimed that she only appears when you are conscious, which is _probably_ better than the alternative.

Temporal manipulation, ageing and reversing age. This is verified by a shaky amateur video that someone posted. It is noted that while it appears that she can reverse age, she seems to prefer the opposite, and generally leaves things eroded or sundered. She doesn’t seem to do this on people.

Most spirits can glamour, apparently, but she doesn’t seem to. There’s a raging debate as to whether this is by choice, intensely split.

She can see how much time people have left to live. Also mostly verified; a surgery resident recounted how the Shepherd appeared to her on her intensive care shifts, pointed at certain patients, and they’d always be dead at the end of the shift no matter what she did to try to save them. You remember how it pointed at you, and then at Aradia.

_Soon. Sooner_.

The last verified ability is the ability to summon the souls of the dead. This has one single submission, showing a grainy picture of some shadowy figures, along with an anecdote. The entry is marked with the questionable tag.

You close the tab, and move onto the forums. Search keywords: shepherd, demonness, “darwin valley shepherd”.

The posts don’t exactly inspire hope.

_I did the cue-ball ritual to summon the last psychopomp(I KNOW but I was really mad don’t judge me) and now she shows up everytime I go to the beach. I think she says something about death by water but I’m really scared now and the other day when I choked on some water at school I swear I heard her following me around for the rest of the day. Please help me!_

Forum replies range from utterly unhelpful to downright demoralising. There’s lists of things that don’t work, lists of things that will likely make it worse or kill you but in all honesty no one knows how because everyone who tried it disappeared, and suggestions to find clerics of life, healing and medicine. Rebuttals to the aforementioned suggestions- medicine is strongly associated with death, someone argued, and it started a twenty-page flame war until the mods showed up.

Someone posted a link to an exorcist’s page- but his bounties are in the hundred grand range, and his pro-bono list is backed up by about eight years. You really don’t think you can take eight years of this.

You’re finally at the end of the thread- a closing notice from a mod.

_Dear Serenity,_ it reads. _I’m really sorry that you’re in this situation now, but I’m afraid that you don’t have a lot of options. The last psychopomp is an entity that is very unknown, and we don’t know the full extents of what she can do- so almost everything you try has an equal chance of backfiring._

_As with all spirits, you can probably rely on the rule of three. If thrice you manage to triumph over her somehow- wordplay, contracting with a different spirit to fight her, or anything else- she may deem you too much hassle to bother with. But it’s a risky move._

_The last psychopomp does not appear to actively interfere in mortal affairs. It seems content to simply watch. Perhaps you can simply allow it to observe._

_But above all, do not give her a further foothold in this world- it may attempt to spread its influence further than it currently can, and I imagine that the results would be Not Good._

_Good luck, and stay strong. - Mod Kairyu_

The mod is right. The Shepherd is an extremely local entity. No one has reported seeing it outside of California state. Which makes its inordinately large online presence extra weird.

You set up RSS feeds, spend a couple of hours a day trawling through links, and finally find the post that started all of this.

The idiots that found it before you had written a single blog post on an arcana site that has since been relegated to caches and archives.

A blurry picture of the Shepherd, and an innocent-looking paragraph about how bloody excited they are, finding a spirit, and finishing with-

_But you won’t believe this, guys: she spoke to us._

_She told us that if we could speak her name, we could bring anyone back from the dead_.

You scroll, hitting a stretch of black screen, and see the ram’s skull reflected in your screen.

_Tonight_.

You spin around, swearing.

The Shepherd stands there for a moment, wordlessly staring, before disappearing in a swirl of red light.

“Jesus Christ,” you say. Its appearances has been remarkably random- at the bus stop. In the bathroom when you decide to take a shower. In the computer labs at college when you look up after a long day and realise it’s nine and you’re the only one still there.

You close the tab, and breathe deep to try and lower your heart rate.

Then, your brain catches up to what just happened and you curse. Where’s your fucking phone? You pat at your pockets, reach around your desktop, and finally see it plugged into the wall.

A string of notifications. Messages from Aradia.

_Sorry to bother_

_Come quickly please_

_The power just went out_

_Shep is here_

Your blood fucking runs cold. Three minutes ago.

Shoving your phone into your pocket, you grab at your keys- on your dresser this time, thank god for past-you leaving shit in sensible places. You rush out of your room, not bothering to be quiet even though it’s past eleven.

You find yourself behind the wheel almost abruptly, going entirely too fast. You’re on edge. You can barely keep in your lane. You remind yourself to stop and obey the lights as you cross the highway to get to AA’s house, and you limit yourself to ten above the speed limit.

_Soon_ , you hear, and your heart pounds. You risk a glance to your left.

You almost drive into a tree. Out of the corner of your eye, you see a towering figure wreathed in red in the passenger seat.

“Fuck off,” you hiss.

Then your phone rings. You fumble at your pocket, and you have never been so relieved to hear anyone’s voice.

“Sollux,” she says, “she’s gone now.”

You suck in a breath. “She’s next to me now.”

“What? Wait, Sol, hang on, are you _driving_?”

“I’m coming AA, just hang tight-”

“I think it’s alright now, I’m looking for the cause of the power outage and it looks like a tree fell on our lines. God, I feel so dumb right now.”

“Where are you?”

“I’m just- oh, shit!”

You hear a sharp impact and muffled swearing, signal crackling through the phone. About to pull up to AA’s house, you think, _damn, it’s dark_ , before you realise that you forgot to turn on your headlights.

Another dull, thudding sound rings through the car and you pull the emergency brakes- too little, too late. The impact rocks you through your secondhand car’s shitty suspension, and you see nothing outside- the power is out on the whole damn street.

You were going _too fucking fast_.

The silence rings.

The noise that breaks it is the sound of bone on vinyl of the Shepherd’s oversized ram horns scraping at the ceiling of your car. You turn towards it, reluctantly.

Its eyeless sockets glow red.

You swear, rip your seatbelt away from you and stumble out of the car.

In Aradia’s driveway lies a figure exactly her shape and size. You cannot see her face past the spread of her hair, and you’re grateful for that.

You kneel next to her, and bring your hand to her throat. It’s warm and wet and slick and when you manage to turn on the torch on your phone you see that it’s fresh blood red.

The scant throw of the torch beam sweeps over ugly rusty red slowly dripping down the slope around her, seeping into the concrete of the driveway.

Gingerly, you reach for her face. Hold your hand over her nose, her mouth. You don’t feel a damn thing.

You already know. The Shepherd is here. You know.

You just didn’t expect that you’d be the one to kill her.

_Call out to her_.

You look up. The Shepherd hovers silently. It is a silhouette outlined in faint erratic lines of red light, and your phone’s light glints off the curve of its horns.

It takes everything in you to refrain from punching it in its blank, fleshless skull.

_Call out to her, and you may have her back in flesh._

“This is a trick,” you say. You can’t seem to stop shaking. “You’re going to fucking replace her.”

A figure appears next to the Shepherd, seemingly moulded from shadows. The features knit themselves together.

Aradia, looking down at you solemnly.

_The Demonness has my name_ , she says. She looks troubled.

“I only have to say her name, right?”

_Correct_.

“Who am I calling, really?” you ask. It’s an important question.

Aradia points to the Shepherd. As you feared.

It has taken the name of Aradia Megido and you’re- you’d be calling it. For some purpose. You remember your reading- if someone has its name, they’d get one soul, brought back from beyond the grave.

You don’t know its name, and it seems to have taken Aradia’s. If you call for Aradia, you’d get her, and it went _really badly_ for everyone else.

You think. You think very carefully.

“I have a list of demands,” you say.

_Are you bargaining with me, mortal?_

The bones rise another foot in the air. The red light swirls, intensifying, and it’s hurting your eyes.

_She’s amused_ , the Aradia-shade tells you. _Please be careful, Sol._

You’ve already thought this out.

“One, Aradia comes back. She’s back, body and soul, as living-”

_I cannot fulfill that._

“Fine, okay, she comes back as best and as completely as you can manage- and it has to be her, her complete soul, her mind, not just you wearing her face, or some version of her from my memories- no bullshit like that.”

The bones click together. _Acceptable_.

“Okay, and, you have to keep her like that for as long as her-”

You cut yourself off. No, bad train of thought- her time’s already up, apparently. You correct yourself. “For as long as I’m alive.”

_Acceptable_.

“And, you need to protect us from external harm. No unfortunate traffic accidents, nothing of that sort- if you see a car coming you fucking _stop_ it, am I clear on this?”

The skull floats off the rest of its bones, rotating slowly through the air.

You tense. You think that maybe it’s about to blow your head off your shoulders for your impertinence. You’re about to speak up, say, _forget about it_ , but ghost-Aradia shakes her head and holds up her hand.

The skull turns back to face you. _She will get a share of my powers to defend the two of you_.

“What, specifically?” You know better than to let spirits off with vague promises. Specifics. You happen to be fucking brilliant at specifics.

_She may alter the glamour that gives her the illusion of life. She may use some of the locomotion of my main form. She may cause things to stop moving in the temporal dimension, for a short time._

“How much? How long?”

The Shepherd’s bones click, a rapid rattle that almost sounds annoyed. It hovers about five feet up and raises a hand shrouded with half-decayed flesh, palm towards you.

You curse yourself. You need to stop interrupting terrifying death spirits.

A burst of crimson energy explodes out of its palm, and you’re still here, flesh normal and not ageing and rotting or turning into dust or whatever else. Instead, it has formed a translucent red disc large enough to completely cover you, spinning rapidly. You watch, transfixed, as they slow to a crawl, and then wink out of existence.

You forgot to keep count of the seconds. You turn to Aradia-ghost instead.

She nods.

_Do not interrupt me again. Lastly, she may also, at any time, drop the glamour_.

You give it a second or two before you speak. That seems to mollify it. “How will she come back?”

_You will have to pay a toll. I will increase it if you abuse my services_.

You glance at Aradia. She meets your eyes, and nods, slowly.

“Alright. Aradia Megido. We have a deal.”

_Excellent_.

You remember the forums with a pang. _Above all, do not give her a further foothold in this world,_ someone had written, some months ago. And here you are, bargaining with it. Setting it loose to exert its malevolent will in this city, just so you can have Aradia back. 

This doesn't enter your decision for more than a heartbeat. You're selfish. You'd let the world burn to get her back from the jaws of death, and you'd definitely let the world suffer some vague entropic spiritually-accelerated apocalypse, if you could get her back  _right the fuck now_. 

Aradia’s ghost blinks out. The Shepherd moves to hover over her corpse, spinning apart in a burst of red energy and descending, all in a blink of an eye.

It is dark, as the red glow fades from sight. You blink, trying to adjust to the return of darkness, and you notice the glow of something under your car.

You duck down and pick it up. Aradia’s phone. It glows red as you make contact with it. There’s a massive crack running down it, and your sight swims with weird crimson light when you hold it, returning to normal only when you put it in your pocket and stop touching it. 

Aradia is sitting up, frowning. The blood is still on the ground, gradually drying, but she looks entirely unharmed.

“God,” she said. “I can’t believe that happened.”

She throws herself up at you in a hug and you grip her back, tight. You ask her a number of things that only she’d know and she answers perfectly. You’re gonna need someone else to interact with Aradia, check if she’s really back- or if the Shepherd can read minds.

But she seems like the real thing.

As her face presses down to your shoulder, you realise that she still doesn’t breathe, and while she moves to wipe at her eyes you don’t feel any wetness. She’s warm, but when you touch her wrist you can't seem to find a pulse.

You ignore it. You have to ignore it. She’s back, even if it took the most horrible ten minutes of your life to achieve that. That’s all that matters.

You don’t know how long you spent there, holding each other.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so fair warning that this is the last of my pre-written chapters. I have about 60% of chapter 5 done, and then the Last Full Chapter, and then a half length epilogue. 
> 
> (side note: at ~ 20k words, this is already at 2/3rds the word count of Night Owls. What the fuck happened to shorter? Hell if I know. I just hope that it's more coherently plotted at this point. And also that I don't have to take a 7 month intermission. No promises but I hope to get the next chap up in a couple of days, and then the last chapter plus epilogue one month from then.)


	5. you won't save the night for me

**> Rose: See yourself die**

Over the years, the side of your life that frequently puts you in the path of spirits, other human practitioners, and miscellaneous beings that can only be classified as ‘neither, or both’ (one Aradia Megido springs to mind) has asked you one question, over and over. 

“Who is your patron?” 

And then, disbelievingly, “ _ why _ ?” 

You espouse on the nature of prophecy. Who are the well-known seers in mythology? You don’t need to be a divine conduit to god’s will. You just need to see the future. 

Apollo, the god of prophecy. The sun god. Yes. Certainly, that would make sense. 

You’re somewhat concerned that the  _ sun _ motif will overshadow the prophetic part of things, you tell them. The argument will then derail- but light powers are  _ cool _ , and you will just have to shrug at them. 

You’ve heard the Sybil, a couple of times, and the oracles of Delphi. But they give plot prophecy, you’d argue. Wishy-washy bullshit that can pan out in any way and still result in them say  _ I told you so _ . This sort of prophecy is almost worse than no prophecy at all.

Hence, Cassandra. Straightforward, directly to the point. And infallible. 

Infallible, but so, so difficult to believe. You  _ never _ believe her. But you try to act on it anyway despite your disbelief. 

You consider telling the truth at some point.

You have known your death since you were sixteen years old. Ten years ago, you were living in a cold, cold house, with a mother that was barely ever home, and with a lovingly tended wine cellar. The latter is more pertinent to this incident than the former. 

You were drunk and alone when you sat on the freezing cold ground of the ridiculous mausoleum your mother had built when you were nine and you cat died, which has since stood as a monument and a symbol of the impermanence of life and has the intended effect of motivating you to make something of yourself. It instead serves to shelter you at your drunkest and most helpless in the face of overwhelming Weltschmerz. 

Just the usual, you know. 

You’d been planning this for… a while. You’d spread reams of books and scans of old manuscripts around you. 

Then you’d closed your eyes and called as loudly as you could.

_ Spirits of old, beings of antiquity. Is there one in your number that is willing to bargain? _

You’d gotten pretty much nothing in response. Makes sense, it’s all empty words at this point. You need to offer something concrete. 

_ Sacrifice of blood and wine _ , you broadcast _ , for the spirit who can tell me how I die _ . 

You’d dramatically laid out a crystal chalice, uncorked… something expensive, you’re a little too far gone to read fancy Edwardian script bullshit, and carefully pricked your thumb, letting a few droplets fall into the wine.

There was no flurry of spirits and deities answering your call. 

Just a single, booming voice, a voice of a prophet that knows that she is always right, with the irritation of a woman who is never heeded.

You got Cassandra, and she showed you the future. The future already as written, the future absolute, unchangeable. 

You’d expected something… dramatic, you suppose. A year from then, driving a car off a cliff. In two months, executing some lovingly crafted, passive-aggressive suicide plan. 

Instead you got… whatever the fuck this is.

You will be drunk and alone when you die. You will know that it is coming, and you will look oblivion in the eye and flip it off. That is, hopefully, what you see yourself doing. You’d hate to find that you will be flipping off a cockroach on the wall that you couldn’t see then. 

You will not be in your room, or any room that you recognise, and you somehow know that this will not be yours, either. The furniture will be extremely generic and the linens on the bed look scratchy. You wonder if you will do an Oscar Wilde, too- witty remark about the wallpaper- but it looks like you will be more creative than that. 

There will be an empty vodka bottle on the desk, and a note. You somehow know that this is a letter, addressed to the love of your life. You will write it before you begin drinking heavily. 

It will not be because you are bored, like you presently are. It will be because you are scared, and you’d do anything to avoid difficult feelings. 

You will climb into the uncomfortable looking bed, and stare straight up at the ceiling, and say- 

“I suppose that this will be all.”

You will not be very old at all. You will look about your mother’s age, now. You will close your eyes for the final time and exhale for the final time. 

The clock on the wall will read twelve, exactly. You can’t see the date anywhere in the room. 

You will go to your death like you expect it. 

In the cold crypt, your sixteen year old self thinks of a billion ways to refute that little scene.  _ That’s not me at all _ , you think. 

YOU OR NOT, IT WILL HAPPEN. NOT THAT YOU WILL BELIEVE ME.

“I was just... expecting something a little more exciting that that,” you mumble to the empty crypt. 

WHY WOULD YOU EXPECT DEATH TO BE EXCITING? IT’S ALWAYS THE SAME. 

ANYWAY, WE WILL MAKE THE CONTRACT IN TEN MINUTES, WHEN YOU FINISH THAT BOTTLE OF WINE YOU’RE CURRENTLY HOLDING. 

You’d put down the bottle, missed the ground somehow, and nearly sloshed it over your wrist.

“You’re Cassandra. Why would I do that? What’s the use of contracting with someone who gives me prophecies that I don’t believe?” 

That’s what you think you said. In reality, it was probably something more like, “Ngurh, ‘andra. Nguuruuuuh.”

She gets you anyway, probably because she’s a spirit and she can read your mind or see the future or something. 

HOW WOULD I KNOW? EVERY SINGLE ONE OF MY CLERICS ARE BATSHIT INSANE. FINISH THE WINE, MAYBE THAT WILL HELP YOU FIGURE IT OUT. 

You drink the wine and drunkenly argue with yourself for almost ten minutes. Then you make the contract, exactly as she predicted you would. 

Hence, the truth is that you never chose her, and neither did she choose you. You are both helpless passengers in the face of the Fates. 

No different to anyone else, really. It’s just that she can See. 

**> Be the Seer, in the present.**

In the present, you are sitting in your apartment, which just got trashed by a vengeful spirit of spiders and nightmares.

The future-sight of your deity evaporates from your mind as you finish up a pair of text messages. What comes next is now uncertain. Like the usual.

You had lifted Kanaya onto your bed with great difficulty, and then retrieved a knife and a Tupperware container from the kitchen. You put down your phone and look over all your implements. 

You are ready.

You hesitate. 

You are ready, but you are afraid. 

“I’m not going to die here,” you say aloud, comforting yourself. You know with absolute certainty that that is true. You have seen your death, albeit drunkenly, but you have seen it. It has been prophesied, and your deity is unbelievable but never wrong. 

You slice your wrist open over the Tupperware, and you wait. 

This is a hunch. It’s a pretty darn safe hunch, but you think Kanaya’s sister may have passed on the vampiric curse before whatever happened to her. 

And you think that the curse may be very conveniently activated at death. 

However, you know your lore. Vampires wake up hungry. Vampires must feed. As much as you personally enjoy fantasising about attractive women with their fangs in your jugular, you’re pretty certain that it’s… unwise, to let that happen, with a newborn, literally bloodthirsty vampire. 

Hence the Tupperware. 

You’d had to remove Kanaya’s rather bloodstained shirt to dress the severe puncture wound through her abdomen. You could see her fucking spine through that hole if you squinted. While you’re not entirely sure if vampires need first aid, you figure that at the very least it might help her with requiring less blood when she wakes up. 

If she wakes up. If you’re right. 

You’d pulled your covers up past her chest because you’re not a perv, but maybe you are, but damn she’s attractive. Nice, substantially muscled arms- well, she swings a chainsaw around, that upper body strength must come from  _ somewhere _ . Very nice collarbones, sloping invitingly to the base of her graceful, swan-like throat. You follow the column of her neck up to her face, study the set of her brow over her sharp cheekbones, the edges of her jaw. Her nose is what you’d call aquiline- you wonder if she’s Greek, or Middle Eastern. Maybe Jewish? If that’s the case, would freely given blood be kosher for her? 

Hopefully she doesn’t care about dietary restrictions. You’d hate to be bleeding yourself into a plastic container for no reason.

The blood loss is starting to make your thoughts fuzzy. Your mental faculties have been reduced to ogling Kanaya’s deathly pale, almost radiant visage. 

Sluggishly, it occurs to you that you have more to fear than death. 

In the prophecy, you will die alone. But before you die you will write a note to your love. Who is not there, for some reason.

You look at Kanaya’s very pale, very dead, and very pretty face, and let out an undignified, woozily whispered, “Fuck.” 

**> Terezi: Investigate text message**

Your phone unleashes a wash of noise that is your terrible text tone. It’s from an unknown number.

It simply reads,  _ Need help - Rose _ . 

This is swiftly followed by an address. 

You’re so tired. It’s late- past eleven. You should be in bed. 

But there’s that fucking spider. 

You yawn, swear, and struggle to put your phone away while starting the car. 

Sixteen minutes later, you pull up in front of an In-N-Out. You look the address up, double-check, and triple-check. 

Definitely an In-N-Out. 

Before you can kill the engine, call Rose, and demand answers, two people exit holding takeaway cups. 

You wind down your window and call out to Sollux and Aradia. 

Wordlessly, Aradia hands you one of the cups. Strawberry milkshake. 

Your favourite. 

“We’ve been instructed to bribe our driver,” she says, solemn. You take the cup, and do what you suppose that you need to do. You unlock your doors. 

Sollux has been given another address, in yet another cryptic text from Rose. 

“What’s her deal anyway?” he asks. “She’s been nothing but mind games and vague bullshit.” 

“Gimme,” you say. Sollux, uncharacteristically, hands over his phone without a fight. 

So. Maybe he’s somewhat spooked, despite his laidback demeanor. 

You briefly relate what went down with the Nightmare Queen, and you wonder whether to tell them about Vriska.

“The cambion found me after, and, we talked. She’s not a cambion any more now, she’s a spirit, a small and not very powerful one.”

You are the only mortal in the world that knows Vriska’s name. It slips to the tip of your tongue but you want to keep it to yourself, selfish as that might be. 

Names are important. Doubly so for spirits. 

“I don’t want to call her, so I’ll refrain from naming her,” you finish. Smooth, Terezi. 

“Domain?” Sollux asks. He’s thumbing through his phone, undoubtedly making notes on things to research. 

You think carefully. “Improbable fortune bestowed through equal misfortune inflicted.” 

“Hmm,” he says, and goes back to scrolling. 

He doesn’t have long. You’re at your destination, a residential high-rise complex. 

You reach up to your pendant and a trail of spiritual havoc blossoms across your vision. Ah. This must be Rose’s apartment. 

On a whim, you decide to take the half-cup of delicious strawberry bribery that you’ve been given. 

The three of you walk right up to the hallway of the complex and to the door of Rose’s unit. No one answers, which fucking figures. 

You have a good guess as to what happened and you wonder, briefly, why Rose set you up on corpse retrieval. 

Touching your hand to the pendant reveals that something big, mean, and spidery went around the dark corner of the hall. You pick your way around, phones out for light. 

Well. 

The hallway light has been clumsily smashed. There is a big, gaping hole in the wall. 

You suppose that you go… this way. 

Clerics and supplicants usually set up some kind of threshold, a bit of a defence against spiritual intrusion. The Arachnea simply brute-forced past any such defence that Rose might have erected and clawed its way in. As such things go, this is both physical, as seen in the torn-down wall and smashed furniture, and spiritual, in the dashed auras and splinted webs of meaning. 

You see a pile of coins, originally an offering, now reduced to a pile of coins. You see hours and days of work and devotion that took minutes to destroy. 

You  _ think _ you step into a large pool of dried blood. It’s suspicious and sticky under the soles of your sneakers.

If Cassandra is like any other deity, she’d have made the Arachnea pay for all the blood and destruction in her sanctuary. You hope that the spider is hurting.

You hear a noise, and the three of you freeze. 

Out of the corner of your eye, you see Aradia begin to glow unearthly red. You draw your dagger as the door creaks open.  _ Shit. Shit. There’s no water here _ . 

A pale face greets you. You relax, and sheath your weapon. 

“It’s Kanaya,” you tell Sollux and Aradia. “The exorcist.” 

She doesn’t look great, with blood streaked across her face and her neck. She’s lost the coat, and the blouse she has on is only half-buttoned, like she was doing it up and forgot to continue for some reason. 

It also sports a very alarming bloody handprint. 

Kanaya’s eyes flit from you to Sollux, and settle on Sollux. Then her eyes widen, and she groans, bringing one hand to her face. 

Her fingers are stained red. It’s fresh enough that it’s still crimson, wet enough that it smears. 

“What happened here?” you ask. 

“Rose is unconscious,” she says. “She’s lost a lot of blood. Um. I think we should get her some medical care.” 

You notice that she didn’t actually answer the question. 

Aradia steps forward. “Where is she?” 

Kanaya directs her. Then it is the three of you, alone in a room full of broken things. And also the dried pool of blood and viscera that you’re standing in.

You  _ really _ don’t like the way Kanaya is looking at Sollux. It reminds you of the way  _ Vriska _ looked at Tavros, the night you met her, this kind of calculating, hungry desperation. 

“Why are you here?” Kanaya asks. She still hasn’t taken her eyes off Sollux.

“Rose sent us messages,” you reply. You drop your arm to your side slowly, ready to draw again. 

“Before she passed out,” Kanaya says, licking her lips, “she told me to pass on a message.” 

Why the fuck are you still holding the smoothie cup? You can’t put it down anywhere, this room hasn’t got any fucking furniture that isn’t in bits.

Ugh, this is stupid. Rose is the worst at interior decorating. 

You watch as the exorcist, or rather what you’re beginning to suspect is an ex-exorcist leans close to Sollux’s ear, and whispers something. He frowns, and then inhales sharply.

“Fuck,” he says, with feeling. “Oh, for fuck’s sake.” 

It’s an odd expression, a lot of shock and a bit of a manic light in his eyes. You can’t even begin to fathom what it means.

Before you can react, Kanaya leans closer, and says, “I’m really sorry.” 

You stare, bemused, as she grips your friend’s throat and bites down. 

You should probably interrupt that. You throw whatever you’re holding at her. The smoothie cup clatters to the ground sadly at their feet, but you use the ensuing distraction to draw your dagger, close the distance, and raise it to the back of the ex-exorcist’s neck. 

There’s a lot of unknowns about this situation, but one thing is completely certain: Kanaya is now a vampire, for some reason. 

“Please release my friend,” you say, as pleasantly as you can manage. Politeness. Ass-kicking. Et cetera. 

You’re thankful that Kanaya doesn’t take the ass-kicking option, because you’re not really sure if you can take her, judging by her incredibly badass spider fighting earlier. She extricates her fangs, which gives Sollux the opportunity to back away, and you the opportunity to tackle her into the pile of coins. You end up above her, dagger over her heart. 

It’s not quite a stake. You really hope that it would do, because you just remembered that vampires probably don’t need intact jugulars and what you pulled was an incredibly dumb maneuver that would have only worked on a vampire that clearly also forgot that she is now a vampire. 

Sollux retrieves something rectangular from his jeans pocket and a heartbeat later, Aradia darts in. “What happened?” 

“Is there a black coat lying around somewhere?” you ask. 

Aradia eyes you, frowning. Several moments later, said garment, blood soaked and gummy with spiderweb, drifts towards you. 

“Thanks,” you say, as you dig around Kanaya’s coat pockets for her pre-prepared exorcist restraints. 

Floating into the room next is Rose, prone. There is a nasty gash on her left hand, and a neat puncture wound at her throat. She is very still, encased by the spinning rings of Aradia’s time magic.

You get the vampire restrained, under the watchful eyes of a time and death god and the human who contracted with said time and death god, as well as a very unconscious cleric of Cassandra apparently dying from blood loss. 

That done, it is time to think. 

Rose needs to get treatment. You dig around in your pockets for your car keys, and toss them at Sollux. 

He catches them, and stares. 

“Get her to the hospital,” you say. “I’ll deal with the vampire.” 

He mouths something, but Aradia shakes her head slowly. 

“She has about ten and a half minutes before she bleeds out,” she says. Puzzlingly, she adds, “can you hear her?” 

Sollux meets her eyes and shakes his head. Some kind of weird telepathy apparently happens, because he nods, slowly, and they leave. 

You’re left alone with the vampire that you have no idea how to deal with. 

**> Be the ex-exorcist**

You wake up and your throat is burning. Images of violence spring across your mind, and literal bloodlust floods through your veins. 

Or, it doesn’t. Nothing is moving through your veins, but your head is pulsing anyway. Not in a physical way. In a some-other-sense-you-probably-didn’t-use-to-have way. 

You sit up and observe the room. The first thing that draws your attention is the plastic container of blood on the side table. 

It’s still warm, you notice, as you focus on swallowing as quickly as you can without choking and spurting blood everywhere like a loser. It’s not  _ actually _ sliding down your throat, despite appearances- it makes it into your mouth, and then something happens and it is vapourised and incorporated into your being  _ somehow _ . 

You guess you’re a vampire now. You would be lying if you said that you hadn’t expected this on some level. 

You were  _ just _ done talking about your vampire sister, after all. 

No one is really sure where Porrim had contracted the curse, but everyone had been surprised when she’d announced her decision to quit her midwifery course and enter a far more exciting career of being the public relations manager for an actual clairvoyant spirit at the centre of a blood cult. It unfortunately did not work out, and part of it not working out involved your town being reduced to a wasteland full of roaming zombies. 

Your family would have rather you done midwifery. You decided that exorcism is a far better use of your skillset- namely, quick wits, compulsive nitpicking, and an aptitude with chainsaws in melee combat. 

Porrim agrees. Last you heard from her, she was on the East Coast, plotting against some sort of army-of-undead raising necromancer. 

Clearly, at some point between her ‘being a vampire’ and ‘being a demon slayer’, she’d found the time to lay her curse on you. Which means you are now conveniently not dead despite your recent disembowelment.

You should write her a letter at some point to inform her of this new development. And delete Snapchat, since it’s not like you can take selfies anymore. 

After you finish the container, you’re still thirsty, but it becomes an urge that you can tamp down in favour of observing your immediate surroundings. 

You notice that you are on a bed. You have disrupted some lovingly draped blankets. You do a quick self-examination. 

It appears that someone has bandaged your midsection. You give it a tentative poke and wince. 

Your missing gut is  _ not _ growing back at all. It also doesn’t hurt at all, probably because everything there’s dead. 

Can you even feel pain? You bite your thumb gently, and conclude that no, you can’t. 

You can’t bleed, either. That’s interesting. Your newly acquired fangs scarred you, and that is somewhat disconcerting. Are you fated to die by accumulated scarring? 

But Porrim looks pristine. Perhaps there’s some trick she employs. Glamour?

Maybe a little more focus on the present is in order. You look around the room. 

In front of you, beside the head of the bed, is a chair. Draped on the chair is a plain white button-up. You look down and realise that your upper body has been liberated from your top, which is likely so much bloody newsrags right now. 

Looks like she kept your bra on. Good on her for being a gentlewoman. 

You’re halfway through buttoning up the shirt when the door opens and Rose steps in. 

The bloodlust returns with a vengeance. You cannot take your eyes off her. 

“Oh, good,” she says. “You’re up.” 

She doesn’t seem bothered by your gaze, even as a large part of you begins to panic. 

“I had a vision,” she tells you, setting herself onto the chair. She’s also stripped down to a camisole and a pair of shorts. The camisole is unfortunate for her because it makes her neck look  _ incredible _ .

So tantalising. So accessible. There’s a pulse under that soft skin that you can just-

_ Not food, _ you remind yourself.  _ Not food _ . 

_ Yes food _ , the newly vampiric parts of yourself says.

You don’t let her tell you her vision. You lunge, and you sink your fangs into her neck. 

Her babbling clarifies as you regain some measure of lucidity. The horror of what you’ve done sinks in, and you release her. 

“... just make sure that you tell them,” she says, urgent. 

Then she passes the fuck out and you freak the fuck out. Not for very long, because Terezi and two other people-  _ one of which is not mortal so not food so doesn’t matter _ \- arrive and apprehend you and stop your creature-of-the-night ways. 

You freely relate all of this to Terezi. You’re still hungering for sustenance, and you’re beginning to worry that this is a permanent state for you. 

Can you even be satiated?  _ Fuck _ . 

Why the  _ fuck _ did Porrim think that this is preferable to just straight up dying? There must be a way to control it. Must be. You have to figure it out before your self-control cracks and you try to take a bite out of Terezi as well. 

An idea occurs to you.

“I need you to bind me,” you say. Terezi frowns at you. 

“Are you a spirit? I’m not sure…” 

You frown down on yourself. “I think I’m made of ether.” 

The two of you look at each other and come to the mutual conclusion of  _ close enough, fuck it. _

“Do you, Kanaya… ah,” Terezi frowns.

“Maryam,” you supply. 

“Do you, Kanaya Maryam, swear to…” 

Terezi hesitates. You supply the wording; you’re an exorcist, so binding vows are nothing new to you. 

“To never intentionally harm a living person under any circumstances.”  

A storm of conflict crosses Terezi’s face. 

“I can’t do this,” she says, brusque. “That might actually kill you, and it’ll be slow and terrible. Vampires need blood to live, don’t they?” 

“I can ask nicely for blood,” you offer. 

“If you can’t harm living persons you won’t have a chance fighting vampire slayers or exorcists or whoever comes after you. You’d be completely defenseless.” 

You think. “I suppose I’ll have to evade them.” 

Terezi buries her face in her hands. “Damn it.”

Her breath is a warm, and her cheeks are flushed with emotion, and you force your attention away from her. 

“It’s not easy to find friends in this line of business, you know,” she says. She sounds tired. “Today has involved  _ way _ too many life-or-death situations.” 

You try to sympathise, but you’re rapidly running out of patience; she’s so warm, so full of life, and you don’t want to do anything you’d regret. So you swear. 

“I, Kanaya Maryam, swear upon my present vampiric being to never intentionally harm a living person who is not intentionally harming me. And should I break my word, I will give up my life and power. This I swear…”  

Usually it’d be ‘upon my eternal soul’, but you’re not really sure if you have one of those anymore, so you finish with- “... on my being as a vampire.” 

Done. Terezi stares at you, and sighs. “With the power vested in me as a mortal human, I witness this oath, and compel the divine to strike down this creature should the oath be broken.” 

Her part isn’t completely necessary usually, but you suppose that when dealing with unknowns, she’d wanted to cover all the bases. All of them. 

Should your being as a vampire not turn out to be  _ strictly _ necessary for your continued functioning, you’re pretty sure that you can’t stand up to the natural reactions that most spirits have to oathbreakers. That being extreme prejudice. 

“This is a long and stupid night,” Terezi says, tired and grumpy as she unties you. “My car’s presumably at the hospital. Do you think Rose cares if I crash on her couch?”

You study her. She still looks very tantalising but the oath lashes against your mind, giving you some leeway to relax. 

“Go for it,” you tell her. “I’m in no position to grant sanctuary, but I will keep watch.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies are in order!
> 
> 1) The very wrong update timeframe. I'm still working on this, but stuff came up. Sorry! 
> 
> 2) Sheer number of PoV jumps in this chapter. I needed to setup for the Finale(next chapter!) so that of course means... setup. All my players in place for my plot threads to *finally* tie up. 
> 
> 3) bumping up the chapter count- this was *meant* to be the finale, but it's not, so next chapter plus epilogue makes seven. 
> 
> For anyone who's *somehow* still following this, thank you SO, VERY, MUCH. Could not have done it without you guys!
> 
> Comments are very appreciated (plus I want to see what you guys think before I drop the End on y'all, which is about 50% done).


	6. make her pay

**> Sollux: Cast off **

You get to the hospital with an unconscious girl. You give them a very abbreviated version of what happened(aftermath of a home invasion, or something, you're not sure you got there ages after the fact). 

They take her away and ask you about her insurance. You know precisely jack shit, so that doesn't take very long.

After that, you're done. Mission complete, objective achieved. There's nothing else here for you to do, and you're glad for that because you can't  _wait_ to leave.

“Sir.” The nurse frowns at you. “Do you need to, ah, get that looked at?”

She’s looking at the bite. You touch it self-consciously; it doesn’t even hurt much anymore, just a dull throb of a bruise. Must be magic or something.

“No,” you tell her, perhaps a little too snappishly. “It’s all under control.”

There’s a constant cacophony in your head- the voices of the soon-to-be deceased are crowding your brain, a side effect of the contract. It's very much not fun and you'd really like to get the fuck out of here. 

Aradia follows behind you, silent. It’s eerie. You glance back a few times, to determine that no, she’s not making any sound. Her feet don’t seem to do more than touch the ground.

You’d welcome the noise, so you didn’t have to listen to all the dying.

You make it to the carpark before you crack.

“This fucking half life I signed you up for, Aradia,” you sigh.

“We didn’t know,” she says, quiet. “You didn’t know.”

“Except I did.” Your actions hang heavy on your chest and it’s a little hard to speak through the weight. “I knew that I’d be giving her a foothold. I knew what I was signing a contract with pretty much a literal devil. And I’d be an absolute idiot to think that you’d be back _exactly_ the same.”

“You never had a choice,” she says. Not sadly, not anything. Just a statement of truth.

Being reminded of this stings. It sucks. Everything was _bound_ to happen one way or another, but you managed to walk away with all the responsibility. The irony of it is cutting.

You never had a choice but you chose to unleash the Shepherd.

But now, there’s something new. Kanaya had given you- perhaps, the key. Maybe.

 _It will all work out. When you leave, wait for a_   _moment._

 _You can free_   _Aradia_. 

The doors swing open and a girl walks out. She’s wearing dark blue hospital scrubs and her hair is in a bun that goes past messy into downright disheveled. She is wearing a pair of bright pink glasses.

Aradia turns, slowly, and raises her arm. The girl looks up, makes eye contact, and freezes.

Her face contorts into a snarl. “Demonness!”

“You haven’t changed at all, good doctor,” Aradia says, toneless.

The girl leaps without warning. Aradia drifts out of the way, and she whirls back around, teeth bared.

Then she notices you.

“Is this your contract?” she asks. She takes a step towards you and it’s intimidating enough that you back up a little.

She takes that as a yes. “You need to break it. Nothing good will come out of this.”

“How presumptuous of you to tell other people how to deal with me,” Aradia, or, you suppose, the Shepherd remarks. You process the implications. The Shepherd, taking control? How? Why?

The girl uses your momentary confusion to close the distance.

“I’m serious.” She’s close enough to grab one of your wrists. “Who’s she to you? BFF? Girlfriend? Well, you need to move on, because she’s already _gone._ ”

The name tag on her shirt says FEFERI. You’re struggling to make sense of the situation.

And just like that, it clicks into place.

“You’re the resident. You posted on the wiki, the forums-”

“You’re really stupid,” she tells you, “if you read all that stuff and still made a contract with her.”

This hits a nerve with you.

For all that you beat yourself up half the time about your shitty choices and past stupidities, you cannot stomach someone else doing that. All safeties are off and you go full asshole.

“What gives you the right to say?” you snap back at her.

“I brought back thirty-nine people with her,” Feferi hisses, “and all they did was cause trouble.”

Okay, maybe she has a point.

She sighs. “None of them came back the same! When they tried to go back to their old lives, and couldn’t, they just sort of hung around like shitty, angry ghosts, and then she’d use whatever dark influence she had over them and get them to lash out, hurt people, vandalise things.”

She scowls at Aradia, or the Shepherd again. “I’ve been culling them, you know. I thought I was done.”

No way is this girl putting a single hand on Aradia. You go through the wordings again. Set her free how? 

It better not be by killing her. 

“I worded the contract very carefully,” you tell Feferi. “She doesn’t have room to manipulate Aradia.”

She rolls her eyes at you. “And you think I didn’t?”

“It’s been months, and there’s been no-”

“Just because she isn’t breaking stuff where you can see it,” Feferi scoffs. “And I bet that she’s _exactly_ the way she was before she was brought back!”

Aradia coughs. “I still prefer existing, even though this can be… difficult.”

Feferi laughs. “Like I can believe anything you say, Shepherd.”

This is stupid. You don't dignify any of this  _farce_ with a response.

“Look,” Feferi says, breaking the silence, “I really do get that you thought you were doing the right thing. So did I.”

She takes a deep breath, and then continues. “She started with- with the head games. She knew that people dying on my watch bothered me, so she rubbed it in. She told me to remember their names. She told me how old they were, every time.”

“So you made over thirty contracts with her?” You’re still a little(a lot) pissed off about the way she’d approached this.

“Look,” she says, tiredly. “I don’t blame myself anymore, and I don’t blame you. We had no choice in the matter.”

“I’m tired of having no choice,” you say. Your vehemence surprises you.

But you’re being honest. You are really, really fucking sick of having things just happen to you, and being helpless to stop any of it.

“You have a choice now,” she tells you, modulating her voice to this- insultingly soothing giving-advice tone. “You can release her, void the contract."

"Fuck off." 

She heaves a great big sigh. "I only ever mean well! Why doesn't anyone ever  _listen_ to me? God." 

"Maybe drop the better-than-thou schtick," you deadpan. "Bit hard to hear you shouting down from your high horse, princess." 

"I am  _not_ -" she breathes in deep, and exhales. "Anyway this isn't about me and my character flaws. You need to break that stupid contract!"

“That’s not the right choice,” you fire back. “She’s just going to wander off and find some other hapless soul to torment. At the end of the day, I’ve bound her to me for as long as I live-”

“And for as long as you live, she’s going to follow you and rot everything you touch. Sounds real smart, smart guy!”

“Even if I let her go, she just does what she wants! You can’t _force_ her to leave you alone- actually, why _me_? Why did she let you go?”

Feferi blinks, and shrugs. “I don’t have the slightest clue. She did her usual mocking doom and gloom thing and then…”

She frowns. “Huh.”

In a flurry of motion she digs into her handbag and triumphantly retrieves a notebook. She flips through it rapidly, and out of the corner of your eye you see movement.

You look up. Aradia is right where she was, idly watching. She has a furrow in her brow like she’s just on the edge of solving something, but before you can stop and analyse it Feferi tugs on your shirt sleeve.

She sure is grabby.

“Twelfth June last year,” Feferi announces. “Only one patient died that shift, and the Demonness disappeared after that. I took down the name because I always do that, it’s better to know names because of her.”

You lean over to see the page, and you’re sounding out the name to yourself when you notice motes of red light at the edge of your vision.

You look up.

Swirls of red have appeared around Feferi, and she looks down at herself, surprised. The image of Aradia is flickering. You see the curve of the Shepherd’s cruel horns starting to take shape.

“No!” you shout.

You reach for Aradia’s non-functional phone but the magic peels off Feferi like cut ribbons. You didn’t do anything. This is something else.

Feferi grins. “Did you think I’d walk around unprotected, with _you_ out here?”

You then notice her ring. On her middle finger is a cut obsidian stone, set on a thin silver band. It seems to be actively sucking the light out of the area.

With a grin, Feferi flips off the Shepherd, showing off her ring. She fades away in parts- first her legs, her torso, and then her voluminous mane of hair, then her outstretched arm, and finally, her smug, smug, smile.

You turn back to the Shepherd. Her ram’s skull tilts, eyeing the book in your hands.

It crumbles to dust, centuries of wear happening in a blink of an eye.

“Jokes on you,” you tell her. “I’ve already memorised the name, and you’ve broken the terms- _she_ gets to drop the glamour, not you.”

You know exactly what to do, now. For once, there’s a road you can take out of this mess.

“Bring her back,” you say. “Bring her back, Da-”

A burgundy fog gathers and the Shepherd disappears in a swirl of red light.

You exhale, the rest of the name lying unsaid on your tongue. This is fine.

You put your hand in your pocket and retrieve Aradia’s phone. It’s warm in your palm, and there’s an insistent tug on it when you move it, like an iron bar in a magnetic field.

You can free Aradia. All you need to do is to let it pull you to her. 

* * *

  **> Be the spirit of inflicted misfortune and stolen luck**

Terezi shines brighter now that you recognise domains and signatures, marks of the spirits with their various claims on her. You recognise the mark of her dragon, a proud vibrant teal over her heart.

There’s an odd signature lying over her eyes. You squint at it, and you think the mark, the veil shrouding her eyes is a rusty red. It reminds you of dead things and ageing bones.

Does she know about this? You drift close to her, and deftly unravel the latticework of the mark as you brush her hair behind her ear.

She blinks at you, quizzical. “What’s that for?”

“Thanks,” you reply, absently. “You didn’t have to save me.”

She studies you seriously. “I’m not sure if I did,” she admits.

You wonder what she means by that.

You part ways, her driving down the mountain, and you-

For the lack of anything better to do, you fly over the town to think.

You can just leave if you want to. The idea strikes you, and you’re dizzy with freedom.

You could leave your mom to starve. As soon as the thought occurs to you, you flinch, mentally, trying to get it out get it out get it out.

She’s your mom. You could never leave her. Never.

Well, now you don’t have to! You’re stronger now, you can fly and you think you can do some cool luck shit beyond the cheap tricks you’ve been using for the past few years. You can _definitely_ keep up with her.

Definitely. But then she will grow larger, and then you’re back where you started- desperate, afraid, trying to find victims as quickly and efficiently as you can. You’ve got hunting down to an art form but it still isn’t enough for her.

Well, would that be so bad? You’re always getting quicker, smarter, stronger. Your mom makes you strong. Her insatiable hunger drives your ambition- you would have _never_ been this strong without her! You would have never even found your luck to start with!

But it would never be enough, not for long. Your mother will grow and her appetite will grow with her form. She is insatiable, and you suspect that it may be something rooted into the core of what she is- hunger without end, limitless consumption.

Your feelings are an awful tangle. You’re doing the thing, the thing that losers do, chasing the same train of thought round and round in convoluted figure eights. You have to _stop it_.

You look down over the city. There are entirely too many cars crawling around like multi-coloured beetles, and you can’t pick out Terezi’s red out of the vast network of roads. You think you can track the places you’ve been- there’s the nightclub, there’s the warehouse you’d been staying in, there’s the street you’d fought the exorcist in.

With spirit-sight, however…

Three auras occupy your attention. One is the lake dragon. His energy is strong, but static- an unwavering pillar fixed upon the lake. Terezi probably can’t borrow much of his power in the city, and if she leaves she’d probably lose the connection altogether.

The second is a blaze of rust. You recognise it- it exudes the same aura, evokes the same ideas as that delicate lace over Terezi’s eyes. And also, you’d run into it before.

Well _fuck_. The Shepherd.

The Shepherd is so bright that looking at her directly pushes a sense of inevitable doom towards the forefront your mind. Her energy warps the space around her, leaving a trail of imperceptible decay. Wherever she goes, wires and pipes rust just a little faster, food and organic matter rot just a little more, and tiny beginnings of cracks seep into the sidewalks under her feet. She isn’t so much a cause of doom as much as a harbinger of it; entropy was already here, after all.

Right now, she’s wrapped up nice and tight in a shell of glamour, taking the form of a human girl. She’s got the same amount of raw destructive might of a dragon inside a mobile form, squished down into a dense package, and the result is spiritual radiation poisoning everything she touches.

What was her area of influence? You’ve been to public libraries, looking up stuff while stalking victims, and maybe you’ve glimpsed some stuff about her but you can’t remember. It’s definitely bigger than this city, but you can’t see the edges of it.

She’s bad news.

You’re glad you took her mark off Terezi. You can’t imagine whatever designs she had were good.

The third is your mom. She is a pulse of dark nightmare and awful hunger, crawling slowly, but surely, through the deserted streets. It’s smaller than the other two, but she’s compact, all of her power packed into a strong, spidery shell.

Seeing her sends a ripple of something through you, not pain, more like an overwhelming pressure. She stops her scuttling and turns around, eyes turning skyward.

Another wave of this pressure, but more intense. This time there is a definite tug of something, something pulling cloyingly at your chest.

“Fuck no,” you hiss, and dive down at her.

She screeches as you slam into her. You hear her anger and it fills you up with something ugly. It reminds you of a toddler screaming for a confiscated toy.

Something clicks into place.

You are angry, too. You are now Vriska Serket and you won’t _belong_ to anyone, not even your mom.

As she moves to lob her venom, you reach for luck. Fortune reveals itself in golden threads and you yank them in your favour.

She misses, and you get the opportunity to dart in and fuck her up. There’s no use going for anything that isn’t the slits under her abdomen, but-

“What the fuck happened here?” you ask. She’s a wreck, her underside shredded messily. What has she been up to?

In response to that, she drops on you, pinning you down under the dense bulk of her body.

All the air gets knocked out of you, which is fine, you don’t exactly need to breathe, but you have no leverage here. Physically and metaphysically- you’re at the bottom, on your back, and your one friend in the world left you an hour ago.

She clicks at you.

“Yes, I’m back,” you wheeze out at her. “Get off me.”

She clicks something completely and utterly predictable.

_Hungry. Hurry up._

“Of course you’re fucking hungry!” You scream at her. “You’re always fucking hungry, and nothing’s ever enough for you!”

 _Really hungry_. Nothing there, just impatience and irritation.

“You’ve never given me anything,” you hiss at her. You’re crying, and you don’t have a hand free to wipe at your eyes, and it pisses you off more. “It’s always take, with you. I go out and do all this _shit_ , and all you do is fucking _take_ from me!”

Failing to impose her will on you, she starts to grind her lower body down on you. The weight is crushing. Literally.

Okay, fuck this. If she thinks she can fucking…. _Smother_ you into submission, she can go bite a big fat spider bulge.

You wriggle your arm and turn your claws on your mom’s savaged underbelly. The resultant hissing and screeching is instantaneous.

The strings of possibility dance before you as you tease them into place. Concrete cracks under you, and the two of you start to fall as the road gives way to the sewers beneath.

You manage to roll out of the way, and naturally a lucky piece of road collapses, pinning your mother in place.

Her screams of rage has turned into fear and pain and confusion and dread.

You should put her out of her misery. You should. It’s the right thing to do. It…

You _can’t_.

“You don’t deserve me,” you tell her, turning away. She tried to grab your leg with her clicking mandibles and you step out of reach.

Instead, you grope for the origin of the feeling she put in you, the pulling, clinging feeling. It resolves into a haze of power, into countless strands of dark spiderweb knotted around your torso, leashing you to her.

You rip into it. It is cathartic for two seconds until you realise that it’s not working. Tattered webs cling onto your arms even as you pull the strands apart, sticky and refusing to leave.

It’s not like the veil over Terezi’s eyes, easily undone. This is years, decades of servitude and dependence, symbolised in sticky cobwebs that stubbornly remain.  

You try to drop it, to let the vision fade from your eyes, but it lingers like an afterimage. The webs stay with you no matter where you look, now that you’re aware that they’re there.

With effort, you open your newfound wings, ripping off the fucking _shawl_ of spiritual cobweb they’re tangled in, and take off into the night.

You’re crying again, biting wind all around you. The only source of warmth, of power, _damningly_ , is her fucking webs, stuck to every part of you in ways that form part of the reality itself.

 _Well, Vriska_ , you think to yourself. _What’s it like to be free?_

* * *

  **> [S] Wake**

The wind whistles through the leaves. You’ve curled up on this branch for shelter; the forest floor is a harsh place, full of man-eating beasts.

It’s not _too_ windy, but you watch your footing anyway, carefully picking your footing on this ridiculously massive purple bough.

The sun is rising, casting rays of white gold over the pink-purple foilage. You’re relieved. The predators of the night will leave, soon.  

_What are you doing, child?_

What was that?

_You need to snap out of this. Wake up!_

The same voice, a deep anxious growl at the forefront of your mind.

“Hello?” you ask, tentative. The voice is familiar, for some reason, but you’re not sure why.

Where have you heard this voice before?

It’s starting to rain, but it must be a sun shower because the light level doesn’t change at all. Just the same shifting of the leaves.

You register that there is no sound in this forest, no rain falling against the leaves, hitting things, no deathly threats below the canopy. Just your breathing.

It’s weirdly soothing.

_No. It’s a dream, child._

_You need to wake up, Terezi_.

Why the urge to wake up, if this is a dream? You can bask in unreality for a little longer, right?

 _You’re in danger. She is here_.

And that breaks your spell.

With that realisation, the landscape of your dream begins to blur and shift. The sun turns an angry red and disappears behind the walls. The trees morph into slate grey brick, and webs drape themselves between branches. When it’s all done you find yourself on a set of stairs, lit by harsh sunlight and covered in cobwebs.

You are not alone.

“Vriska,” you say, slowly. “What the fuck?”

She moves towards you mechanically. “I made a mistake.”

You take a step back, reach for your dagger, and come up empty.

Of course. If she’s controlling the dream, you won’t be armed.

You glance behind you. More spiderweb. And you bet that if you try to run, the geometry of this place will keep you exactly where she wants you.

“I can’t leave her,” Vriska says, hollow. “I can’t. She’s my mom.”

“Bullshit,” you say. You wonder if jumping off the stairs would end the dream, but you figure you’d end up pretty much where you started, same as if you tried to run.

This is very much not a normal dream, after all.  

You need to reason with her while you figure out a way out.

“She’s really mad at me,” Vriska tells you. “Reaaaaaaaal mad. But I bet if I give her someone to eat, she won’t be mad enough to eat me.”

You walk up to her, calmly. “What happened to the oath? You’re sworn not to hurt me.”

She hesitates. You slip past her to one of the gaping windows. No glass, nothing between you and the outside air.

The ground is a long away away, down here. This thing must be on a cliff or something, overlooking a wide canyon.

The canyon is also filled with scurrying white spiders. Which is a little excessive.

Okay, there’s one exit route out of the question.

You think this through, watching Vriska the entire time, lest she do something. Then a speck of movement on the crimson sky catches your attention.

There’s a blue dot in the distance, coming closer.

“What will it be, Vriska?” you ask. “Oathbreaking? I can assure you, that’s a really shit idea. You won’t last five minutes as an Oathbreaker.”

She shakes.

“I can help you with your mom,” you tell her, gentler. “Just bring her up the mountain at dawn. You know we will win.”

She whirls around and grabs you by the arm. You’re a little too surprised to sidestep her, but you suspect that it wouldn’t have worked, anyway. What can you do with someone who controls the physics of this place?

"You keep trying to do this," she hisses. "I've already told you that I'm not going to turn against my mom." 

You look out of the window and see the speck of blue approach.  _Ah_. 

“I’ll bring you to her,” Vriska continues. “I’m not technically harming you, just… transporting you. No oathbreaking here!”

She doesn’t sound very convinced.

“Vriska,” you say, slowly. “Where are your wings?”

“What?” A look of realisation dawns. “Oh-”

You yank yourself out of her grip and throw yourself out of the window.

“You crazy fucking bitch!” Vriska, or rather, the avatar of the Nightmare Queen screams.

“Vriska Serket,” you call, and the power of your invocation _carries_ , even in a dream. “Vriska Serket, I’m counting on you!”

You sure _hope_ she’ll come. If she doesn’t, you’re going to be either a splatter on the ground, or spider food. Probably both.

Your fall comes to an abrupt, jerking halt as firm hands snatch you out of the air.

“Terezi Pyrope, you crazy fucking bitch,” the real Vriska Serket grumbles. She’s got wings. She knows your name. And she’s got her full Name- you can feel that it’s really her, not just some figure that answered to Vriska.

With the real thing right in front of you, you sure feel dumb for falling for the Arachnea’s cheap simulacrum.

_You still have to wake up, child. Time is getting short out here._

That’s your patron. You clutch at your pendant, a metaphysical manifestation of his claim on your services, and return some kind of acknowledgement.

“Can you wake me up?” you ask Vriska.

She slumps. “It’s my m- the Arachnea’s nightmare. She’s stronger than me, in that respect. I can’t break it.”

“What do I need to know?” you ask. “How does what’s in here affect the real world?”

“If you get injured here, the injury carries over. Including fatal ones. Motion is analogous, sorta- to catch you in here I had to grab you out there, too.”

You feel a slight chill run over you. You were _way_ too fucking close to being spiderchow.

“How do I wake up?” you ask her.

“Outside stimuli isn’t going to work if she’s actively holding onto your mind, which she is. Um. If you take enough punishment in here you’d break out, your physical body just won’t let you continue dreaming.”

She stiffens. “Okay, slight problem. I’m carrying your unconscious body out there and your patron just disappeared.”

“No longer dawn out there. Damn it.”

“I can keep flying,” she says.

The sky explodes into a mess of grasping limbs. She weaves past them but an unexpected tentacle curls around her.

A crablike pincer is working at her left shoulder, gripping and twisting. 

Motion and harm is analogous in the dream and out of it. If she drops you in here she’d drop you outside. If she’s grabbed by the dream… you don’t even know what will happen, but you’re guessing the dream equivalence will do something _nasty_.

So you need to get the two of you out of your head, right now. Her hands grip you tight but her face is scrunched up in pain and resignation. 

"Fuck," she says. "I'm sorry, Terezi. I don't know what to do." 

"I do," you reply. 

You look at her. One long, lingering look, taking in her alien features and her determined scowl. 

 _Alright, let’s do this_.

Fighting against every sane thought in your head, you turn around, using Vriska's grip on you as leverage, and point your eyes directly at the dream's burning crimson sun.

The last thing you ever see is red, red, red.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> just the epilogue left! 
> 
> Yeah, I'm excited to end this. I'll wait until I put up the epilogue before I go through the "what's next" wrap up brief. 
> 
> Once again, thank you to everyone who has taken the time to drop me a comment. Y'all rock and ily all so much, seriously.


	7. i promise for life

On the shores of a shimmering lake, a battle is waged. 

Vriska zips high above the water, carrying her charge. She bares her teeth at her progenitor, who in turn clicks her mandibles furiously. 

A haze of burgundy mist interrupts this tableaux. 

“The fuck,” Vriska says. 

Terezi begins to stir in her arms. “What’s happening? It’s dark.”

It isn’t dark at all. The sun creeps its way to the high point of its arc. 

“Did you blind yourself in there?” Vriska asks. She doesn’t seriously believe it, but the dream ended, and, oh god. 

She did, didn’t she. 

“Damn it, Terezi!” 

“It’s probably fixable,” Terezi says, weakly. 

“It’s very not fixable, damn it!” Vriska feels some kind of emotion, crawling up her throat. She let Terezi go blind. She let her go blind, like some kind of  _ idiot! _

The Arachnea pauses in her hissing and clicking to investigate the interloper, who is gradually appearing from the dark red mist. Vriska recognises this colour. 

She sorta wishes that she didn’t. 

They float above this, Vriska watching, Terezi slumped back in her arms. 

The Shepherd of Darwin Valley takes shape, a terrible figure of bone and decaying flesh. The ram’s skull that serves as her head is completely clean, with yellowing ivory patina. 

It raises one bony arm under its ragged cloak, shrouding the giant spider in red light. 

The spider is not in any condition to fight back. Not very long ago, an enormous dragon made of mist had descended upon its tough exoskeleton and left a number of slashes and gouges in the spider’s armour. Each of these gouges are weeping blue ichor. 

The Shepherd’s arm twitches, almost dismissive. The spider lets out a final screech as it dissolves into a cloud of rust, which flow towards the Shepherd. 

“What the fuck,” Vriska says. 

The Shepherd’s skull rotates to face her. The body does not follow. 

_ Newborn _ . 

The word is laced with derision. Vriska gets the impression of rows and rows of cots in an old asylum, the infants within sick and dying. 

A threat? 

Vriska curls one metaphysical finger around a string of fortune, just in case. 

The Shepherd seems amused by that. 

_All roads lead to death, newborn._ _That is the fate of mortals._

“Okay,” Vriska says. She’s glad that her voice doesn’t shake. “Okay, so now what?” 

_ Let that be a warning to you, newborn. She, _ the Shepherd gestures to where the Arachnea Tyraneus used to stand _ , took something from me _ . 

It gestures to Terezi’s form, still cradled in Vriska’s arm. 

_ So I extracted what I was owed, _ the Shepherd finishes. It seems satisfied. 

The ram’s skull detaches and makes a beeline for Vriska. Vriska hovers in place and tries to stare down the skull, which stops a mere hair away from her nose. 

_ Do not ever touch my claims ever again, newborn. This time, your mother takes the weight of your mistake. If there is a next time, it will be you _ . 

Vriska nods very slowly. “Understood.”

Her eyes narrow. “But don’t lay a hand on my-” 

She hesitates. The Shepherd’s skull floats back and spins in place. If it is able to laugh, it would be laughing. 

_ Your mortal? You don’t have a contract, newborn. You have nothing. _

The skull falls, and is caught by the Shepherd’s body. Then it flinches. 

Footsteps. The sounds of someone panting as they run up the steps to the lake. 

“Damara!” Sollux Captor screams, as he jumps past the last two steps in one bound. 

The Shepherd is very, very still. It fixes its dead glare on the interloper. 

_ I don’t appreciate my name being bandied about _ .  _ What do you want? The deal is one soul only, so don’t try anything stupid _ .

“Damara,” Sollux says again, firmer. “Bring her back. Bring Aradia Megido back, as she was before- exactly as she was fifteen minutes before she died.” 

The Shepherd is very still. Rust tendrils of light snap around, almost irritably. 

The cellphone in Sollux’s hand splinters to pieces. He lets them fall to the ground. 

“It’s done?” 

_ It is done, _ the Shepherd says.  _ And my True Name is annulled. _

“Annulled,” Terezi whispers. “Huh.” 

The Shepherd stares down the mortal. He stares back up into its eyeless sockets defiantly. 

“Fuck off and don’t come back,” he says.

_ I have no intention of staying here _ , the Shepherd replies. It seems almost grouchy about this whole affair. 

It disappears in a swirl of rust light. Vriska squints into the space, and determines that it’s really gone elsewhere and isn’t coming back. She finally lands. 

Terezi staggers to her feet, leaning on her shoulder. 

She finally turns to look at Terezi. 

“How’d I look?” Terezi asks, weakly. 

“Jesus fuck,” Sollux says, having moved to see her face. “And is that the cambion- wait, she’s a spirit now, you never really explained why-” 

A shrill ringtone cuts through the air like the sun bursting out out the dawn. 

“Fuck, gimme a sec.” Sollux reaches into his pocket and pulls out his cellphone. When he answers, the other person starts speaking immediately. 

Vriska watches as a slow, kinda dopey looking smile stretches across his face. 

Terezi is quiet for a second, her face pinching into a frown. 

“Sollux,” she calls out. 

Sollux is taking off his glasses and wiping his eyes with one long sleeve. 

“Goddamnit, Sollux!” Terezi yells again. There’s a disbelieving half-smile on her lips. “If Aradia’s actually alive again I need to speak to her!” 

“Hang on, AA,” Sollux says. “Terezi wants to speak to you. And, uh, also, we should probably get her to the hospital.” 

“Why?” Aradia asks over the phone. 

“I sort of went blind,” Terezi begins, cut off by her friends.

“What?” 

“How the fuck-” 

Terezi wipes at her eyes, smearing blood over her cheekbones. “It’s a long story! I’m fine! Probably not up for driving, but you’ve got my keys, right?” 

Vriska watches as Sollux takes Terezi by the hand, and guiding her at the stairs. Aradia is on speakerphone, chattering away. 

An indefinable feeling rises.  _ You don’t have a contract _ . 

She isn’t sure what to do with herself. She’s free. Truly free. The Arachnea is dead and there’s nothing keeping her here. For the first time in her life, the suffocating responsibility of feeding her progenitor isn’t a priority at all. 

She’s feeling a lot of things and she can’t identify even half of those things.

Terezi flails an arm on her other side, turns around, points in the direction of the lake, and says, “Vriska. Come on.” 

She’s facing the wrong way, but her smile is genuine, expectant. 

The spirit of fortune makes a quick decision. She follows.

* * *

 

**> Weeks in the future, but not many… **

You’re getting used to this. 

You wake up the same way, more-or-less. Your phone tries its utmost best to fling itself off your bedside table at the asscrack of dawn, and you fumble for it blindly. More literally than you used to, but it’s fine, really. 

You have help. 

You breathe deep, and draw on your connection to your patron. Your room blooms in fuzzy colours across your mind, using a sense that very much isn’t sight. Momentarily, you feel the ghost of a lashing tail by your shoulder. 

You smile, and reach up to tickle to chin of one of your patron’s underlings before it fades out of corporeality again. 

Using this not-sight, you find your glasses. They are sharp ovals of tinted red glass. You got Sollux and Aradia to get it off eBay for you.

Next to your door is your cane. Your mom will have one carved to your patron’s likeness as thanks for lending you this extra not-sight sense. For now, it is a plain red-and-white cane that you got from the hospital. 

You manage not to trip over anything as you grab breakfast and pack your daily ritual supplies. 

Of course, you can’t drive anymore. Your mother has repeatedly offered to drive you, clucking disapprovingly over your… permanent injury. 

But you have alternative transport. 

“Took you awhile this morning,” Vriska Serket snarks at you as you exit your house and slip your shoes on, leaning on the doorframe as sinuous as a snake. “Not as slow as yesterday, though.” 

You grin at her. “I got you this.” 

You toss a small baggie of blueberries at her direction. Your newfound sense isn’t sharp enough to catch her expression, but you imagine that she looks very perplexed. 

“What.” Her head moves as she examines the bag.

“Haven’t you seen blueberries before?” you ask.

“But, why? I don’t eat, stupid.” 

You grin again. “It’s an offering of fruit. Freely given. Take it!” 

Vriska’s frown is in her voice. “Why blueberries?” 

“You smell like blueberries,” you tell her. “Try them. You’ll see that I’m right.” 

“Are you saying that I smell?” 

Nah, you’re just fucking with her. But you beam at her until she deigns to open the bag. 

She spears a berry on her claw and pops it in her mouth. You wish you had a better way to watch, but you’re entertained nevertheless. 

“I don’t see the connection,” she says, while chewing. “Blueberries?” 

“It will all become apparent,” you tell her, giving her a shit-eating grin. “But first, if you don’t mind?”

You walk out to your driveway and hold out your hands. She obediently goes up behind you, wraps her arms around your waist, shakes out her butterfly wings, and takes to the sky. 

Another morning, another flight to the mountains. It’s even faster than driving there. 

You stop at the foot of the trail as usual and make your way up. Vriska is a cloying shadow at your back, ready to catch you if you stumble. Which you have in the past, but you’re getting used to this. 

It’s really sweet of her, though. You’re grateful. 

Due to your increasing proximity, the dragon on your shoulder grows more solid, more real, with every step you take up the trail. Your not-vision sense is sharpening. It’s a relief. 

If you focus, you can feel the threads of power tangled around Vriska, the dark strands left by the late Arachnea Tyraneus. 

You’ve thought about this for a few nights but you think you have a way of unwinding them. Not all at once, but you can start teasing at the knots, maybe breaking some of those threads. 

The question is if she’d let you. If she trusts you enough to let you do that. 

You go through the morning ritual as Vriska watches, as has been your routine for the past few weeks. The offerings don’t take as long as before, with you becoming more attenuated to using your new senses for depth perception. You only spill a little bit of rice wine, and only because it overflows. 

You crane your head up, trying to judge if the sun’s up by the heat on your face. Through your dragon-sense, you notice Vriska flinch. 

_ Right. _

“Sorry,” you tell her. 

“It wasn’t anything,” she says, irritable. 

You kind of want to go up to her and hug her, but you’re pretty sure that she’d fight that. So. 

You cough into your fist. “Uh.” 

Why are you hesitating? You have everything planned out. Really. Why-

“Yes?” 

“I was thinking that. I, we can officially do a thing.” 

Very articulate, Terezi. You mentally kick yourself. 

Vriska doesn’t say anything, which you take as an invitation to keep rambling. 

“So, uh, I don’t think you have enough power for a contract, and I’m not sure what I can give you anyway and I already have a patron so I was thinking, um. Familiarship. More direct provision of power and shelter and uh-”

“Stop.” There is a shifting, the sound of her feet. You extend your dragon sense outwards and see that her wings are out. 

“That’s…” 

You give her a few moments, momentarily afraid that you’ve pushed her too hard. 

“I can’t accept,” she says, finally.

“You should,” you tell her. “If you trust me, you should. It makes sense, you can get some-” 

“I let you go blind,” she says. You can hear a waver in her voice. “I fought my mom before she came after you, and I had the chance to finish her then but I didn’t. I couldn’t, I wasn’t strong enough, and you got hurt.” 

_ Oh _ . You process the implications. Pissed off spider spirit then strikes out for you, of course- she’d be able to tell that you’d interacted, you’d be faintly marked. 

“This changes nothing,” you tell her. “Offer’s still up.”

“You don’t want me tied to you.” She’s drifting up, toes just scraping the ground. “I destroy everything I touch. That’s what I deal with, what I’ve dealt with my entire life- ruination.” 

You close the distance between you and grab onto her. She sags into your touch, wings folding. 

“I’m sorry about your mom,” you mutter into her shoulder. 

“Don’t be,” she mutters back. “She was really shitty. I don’t know why I feel sad about her being gone.” 

You just hold her tighter, feeling the sun climb and bear down on your back.

It feels like an age. A century. You finally ask again.

“Will you be my familiar, Vriska?” 

It sounds like she’s blowing a raspberry into your hair. “I’m a trouble magnet.” 

“I know that. I can handle everything you can bring here, I think.” 

“Liar. You’re blind now!” 

You pull back, and give her a winning smile. “But I’m here. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t trust you.”

Her hair flicks at your face as she shakes her head. “You shouldn’t!” 

“I was right, though.” You grin wider. “I trusted that you’d catch me and you did.” 

“I’m probably going to fuck up somehow, and you’re probably going to suffer for it.” 

“I’ll stop you,” you tell her, “if it comes down to that.” 

She’s quiet for a long while. You listen to her, try to hear the gears spinning in her head, try to make sense of what she’s thinking.

Finally, she gives you one firm, determined nod. 

“Let’s do this. Okay, what do I do?” 

“Lay a claim on me. Anywhere you like.” 

She hesitates, and slowly reaches for your right hand. You let her take it, and try to keep yourself still as she brushes her lips over your middle knuckle. 

A curl of Vriska’s essence unfurls and settles down, impossibly gentle.

She straightens, and pauses, expectant. You draw your dagger and she rears back. 

“Trust me,” you tell her, as you prick your index finger on the point. You reach for her hand and she gives it to you, and she is still as you smear your drop of blood over her knuckle, the same place as where she kissed you. 

You feel the bond take shape, in the way she becomes weirdly clear to you- you know where she is, and you can feel the flex of her etheric body, at once solid and malleable. 

So you notice, when her shoulders scrunch  _ way _ up. 

“Mortal bodies are weird,” she says, shifting like she’s never going to relax again. “God, your heart. I’ve never felt a beating heart. Is it usually this fast?” 

“Probably not,” you answer, absentmindedly putting your knife away. “Now for the last step.” 

She turns to you and blinks, owlish. You savour the feeling of her lightness, and the fleeting glimpses at you that you can catch through the connection. 

“We seal it with a kiss,” you tell her, deathly serious, and then you cup her face in your hands and reach up on your tiptoes and kiss her as sweetly as you can manage. 

She’s surprised, but she relaxes into it. You let yourself drop back down. 

“Sorry,” you say. “That was a bit mean. There wasn’t a last step, I was yanking your chain.” 

The intensity of sensation from the familiar link is abating, and you think it’ll settle down to pleasant background buzz. 

“Don’t be stupid,” she says, tossing her hair over her shoulder. Then she’s on you, arm hooked around your waist, mouth working over yours, hand carding through your hair. 

It is dizzying. It’s fantastic. Perhaps it’s because of what she embodies, but you feel elated and triumphant, the adrenaline rush of victory pumping through you. 

You feel free. 

“Vriska,” you whisper into her lips. It feels right. It feels like it  _ fits _ . 

Her name belongs on your tongue and you could say it over and over. You won’t get sick of saying it, and calling her to you. 

You wrap your arms around Vriska and let the press of the future fall from your mind. 

_ ~~ FIN ~~ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It is done. And it didn't take me 8 months this time, woo hoo! 
> 
> Thank you for every lovely person who's dropped me a kudo or a comment. I love y'all so much. And thank you for everyone who helped read through the first 3 chapters of this clusterfuck before I uploaded this onto ao3; there were some great thoughts around there. 
> 
> I'll have a wrap up post on tumblr soon. To reiterate, that's [lalondeislandicedtea.tumblr.com](https://www.lalondeislandicedtea.tumblr.com). Stay tuned for more ramblings, and of course the askbox is always open.


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